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16
Jul 11
IF, Gathering Steam
This week I have spent most of my free-time in the evenings reading Aaron Reed’s ‘Creating Interactive Fiction with INFORM7.’ You only have to review Aaron’s online profile and contribution to INFORM6/7 to know that he had a real passion for his craft as well as looking beyond interaction fiction, “developing new forms of participatory storytelling” with Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz.
So, where am I now. Having found the INFORM7 manual really challenging (I got as far as Chapter 3), I have moved on Aaron’s very useable book. Rather than endeavouring to be a how-to reference manual, the book invite readers to apply their knowledge by building optional parts of the Sand-dance, one of Aaron’s IF creations. I find that I am ‘learning’ INFORM7 with an experience guide on my shoulder. A guide that is also talking me through the importance of backdrops, rules, and of course, most importantly, narrative. In fact, Aaron’s book would undoubtedly make for an excellent course textbook (he comments, thinking ahead).
I am only 80/400 pages in, however I would strongly recommend that you read the book and explore INFORM7 at the same time. Originally, I started out just reading the book, however, having gone to a read-and-do approach I am find the conceptual nature of INFORM7 easier to get on with.
I have already developed scenes and regions, added objects, assigned properties. I have learnt about supporters and containers, set rules, created ‘kinds’ and more, in fact I am confident that I have learnt more than enough to engage ALL levels of reading AND writing. Indeed, I am convinced that INFORM7 has immense value to education, to both literacy, ICT and all subjects that can not be physically created in lessons, particularly subjects like History for example.
Now, at the back of my thinking, I have this unnerving feeling that, like INFORM7, the my experience is about to digress and that the impact of programming will soon increase. Hold on, its going to be a bumpy ride for us non-coders. Of course, I could be wrong….
Meanwhile, in school I have been testing the waters with ‘threaded stories.’ My Year 7 class first planned their stories using sugar paper and marker pens before moving to Powerpoint to hyperlink their decision making narrative. It was certainly a very accessible starting point and the students clearly enjoyed the non-sequential writing style. This said, I am not sure that this level of student would be able to access INFORM7??
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6
Jul 11
IFs
Having only played Zork, I wanted another adventure to explore, to confirm that IFs had mileage. The Directory of IFs presented a plethora of opportunities and an active IF community. To play an IF, you will mainly need an “interpreter” although some games can now be played directly in your browser (I had more success with Firefox than IE8). For education environments I would recommend playing offline, using an interpreter like the Z-Machine Interpreter (Windows Frotz).
Next you will need an IF adventure to play. I plumped for Anchorhead, with over 135 ratings, 4.5 stars , the reviews sounded positive. Loosely based on the Cthulhu mythos, Anchorhead takes place in a New England town by the same name that bears a resemblance to Innsmouth, Arkham, and other fictional towns created by H.P. The INFORM7 website also offers a range of starter titles.
Both the reading and the game play were challenging and my word did it draw upon my thinking skills. As I found with Zork there are common commands…
LOOK or L, LOOK AT BOB or LOOK IN JAR or LOOK UNDER BED
TAKE, TAKE KNIFE or DROP, DROP KNIFE
EXAMINE, SEARCH, OPEN, CLOSE, ASK, TELL
INVENTORY or I
so at this point, I felt fairly confident I knew what I was getting into and what I want to share and achieve with the students. On the iOS platform tapping the command line opens the commands list and swipe reveals a note page. Handy.
So, I am confident that playing IF / Zork is an excellent introduction or ‘hook’ to creative writing, however I anticipate that writing an IF will be more of a challenge. Moreover, that sharing and playing one another’s IFs would be a motivator for high quality work. So, to INFORM7.
Learning to write with INFORM7
Interactive fiction lets the player explore your worlds and stories through text. Write adventure games, historical simulations, gripping stories or experimental digital art.
INFORM7 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The installation comes with a manual and ‘recipe book’ that shares practical ideas and uses. There are a number of resources available on the website, and of course I am bookmarking resources as I find them.
Chapter 1 – Welcome to INFORM
I am sorry to say, that in places, I found Chapter 1 rather difficult to follow. I am not 100% comfortable with the different Skein and transcripts available, although and I am hoping that when writing in INFORM7 it will become clear? What I did learn is that INFORM7 will require students to be divergent in their thinking and also demand that they can think creatively.
Chapter 2 – The Source Text
Creating worlds, assertions and rules seemed more intuitive, and the use of verbs an obvious lesson that INFORM7 can deliver. Chapter 2 also provided the basic commands with which to build interactive fiction. Then came the punctuation rules and there are numerous rules to learn. At this point, I can see why IF is considered a useful precursor to programming.
I learnt about the important or ordering, the use of heading the forward thinking through the issues that might arise. The various testing procedures (SHOWME and TEST) were difficult to follow, but this may just be my inexperience. One point of reference in the ‘Administering Classroom Use’ PAGE 2.13 although only the telemetry recordings seem to be of interest.
I found this video clip a few days after, but it about brings you up to speed and to the point that I have reached.
Inform 7 Introductory Screencast from Aaron Reed on Vimeo.
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24
Jun 11
Interactive Fiction so much sexier than…
Let’s face it, ‘Interactive Fiction’ sounds so much sexier than… text based adventures. Interactive fiction, often abbreviated as IF, describes simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment, not that dissimilar to the gamebook adventures or CYOA titles (choose you own adventures) in which the reader’s choices determine the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcome.
My initial, fleeted experiments with classic text based adventure ZORK last December really surprised. I was taken aback by just how engaged these Year 11 Xbox and Playstation junkies were with N, S, E, W and open, look type commands and simple black and white text interface. We searched online for help, maps and all manner of Zork information.
I had original scheduled time this summer to create a unit of work around text based adventures when I read about INFORM7
a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. It is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world’s best-known writers of IF.
Impressed? Further research highlighted another product, ADRIFT4 (5 in BETA)
ADRIFT Generator is a program written for Windows 95/98/NT/2K/ME/XP which allows you to create your own Text Adventures. Instead of having to learn a new adventure programming language, ADRIFT Generator takes all the difficulty away leaving you with a simple, yet powerful game designer. Adventures are built up by adding rooms, objects, tasks, events and characters. All you have to do is type in the descriptions, and select how everything interacts with each other from pull down menus and lists.
as well as a massive ‘underworld’ of IF advocates, games and tutorials.
So, Zork was interesting but INFORM7 and ADRIFT4/5 takes IF / text based adventures one almighty step forward, putting the student in the driving seat authoring the stories rather than reading / playing them.
After reviewing forum debates outlining the virtues of both platforms, I decided to first explore INFORM7 simply because there were education focused, age appropriate resources. So are you ready for adventure? Join me, download the FREE INFORM7 software and write your first IF adventure.
Note – at this point I had not yet discovered Quest 5.
Popularity: 21% [?]
31
May 11
Using Feedback as the Lesson
Before I get to the ‘Using Feedback as the Lesson’ post, there are a couple of pedagogical reflections / questions I wish to highlight / discuss with you and hopefully, as its the holidays, you might comment?
A recent research study by Durham University would suggest that quality feedback from teachers is more effective in raising grades than homework, uniforms and smaller classes. More specifically, it outlined that giving pupils clear and effective feedback was “very high impact for low cost.” If this is in fact the case, how best to use this feedback?
How do you get students to really read your quality feedback comments and not simply make a bee line for the summative grade?
Do you ever exclude the grade in order to encourage your students to focus on the feedback? (This is an enlightening exercise, I can assure you). If this is the case, when, if at all do you provide the grade?
Is the time it takes you to write quality feedback fully exploited? If so, how is this achieved?
Using Feedback as the Lesson
Here is one technique to get more from the quality feedback you offer using the Moodle Gradebook export feature.
After grading and writing the summative feedback into the Moodle gradebook, select export. Make sure you tick the ‘Include feedback in export’ option, de-select the unwanted assignments and export.
In this example, I exported included two tasks, a self assessment checklist grade and the assignment grade and feedback. To create the lesson resource, I simply copy and pasted the information into WORD and removed the student name, leaving the checklist and assignment grade and summative feedback comment.
In the next lesson, given a copy of the assignments, students have to decide which feedback comment belongs to which submission, of which, one belongs to them.
The subsequent lesson requires students to read not only their own feedback but also their peers. It calls into action a range of analytical and evaluative skills, that frequently leads to quite emotive learning debate. Significant negotiation and counter-argument skills follow as students vie for the highest grades on offer, in a game show style encounter. Although I have tried differentiated groups, top, middle and bottom grades, I have found mixed grade groups most successful, with the whole process adding real learning value to the time a teacher spends marking.
This used to be highly valuable, but arduous lesson to prepare. Photocopying then marking the assignments, typing up or separating the comments, cross referencing the grades and creating the groups, but now…. with Moodle upload assignment and gradebook export feature it was access the print, grade, export and copy / paste to WORD. With the option to reuse the lesson resource with other groups.
Have you used this technique before? What were your impressions?
Interesting, after this post was published a respected colleague tweeted a question. ‘Do you share scores with all students?’ The answer was no, it was just within the groups however I am not sure the scores need to be included at all? They do stoke the debate but it’s got me thinking?
The conversation / thinking surrounding this post continues. We currently auto-email the feedback to students but as yet students are not logging on regularly to collect the feedback, hence the lesson still works very well.
If, however, students did regularly access their feedback, is there a way to delay that feedback reaching the students? Can the assignment be hidden and therefore the feedback hidden from view? What about the auto-email. Still to be investigated.
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