In just over twelve months my interest in Interactive Fiction (IF) or text adventures has gone from a passing curiosity to a passionate endeavour. Back in August I set out a few steps or targets that I felt were needed to bring IF to a wider education audience. What I could not have anticipated was that literacy, computing and reading incentives would literally collide and that games based learning would be considered almost ‘a cure-all’ strategy for learning and that ‘someone else’ would put their foot down firmly on the IF accelerator. That someone being, Interactive Opportunities’ Andy Goff (@andygoff).
At the beginning, I had little more than a dozen classroom hours experimenting with Zork, an 1980s text adventure goliath and a little more than an educationalist gut feeling that IF had real educational value. Twelve months on I now have empirical evidence and a few isolated IF case studies to support that ‘gut feeling.’ I have experienced IF educators and writers to consult with, a growing community of respected educators enthusiasts to bounce ideas off and I admit, I have logged significant hours playing different games, on different platforms, offline, online, and on my iPhone. We even have a hashtag #ttgbitn if you want to join in and play Quests ‘Things that go Bump in the Night.’ One added bonus is that the education community is cross phase and cross subject, making the conversation even more intriguing. We have a fantastic FREE playing and authoring platform, Quest, and the industrious support of Alex Warren (@alexwarren) the lead developer. Writing in Quest, I created a few basic two and three room games, thought nothing worth publishing and whilst I am definitely a novice, I have contributed some simple video tutorials to help others with the basics.
My only disappointment is that I have found it very difficult to allocate ‘teaching time’ to continue to explore the potential of IF as a teaching tool with students. Where I have been guerrilla in its introduction, IF has been very well received by students. Fortunately
Of course, with any fresh ideas, mistakes are be made and I originally thought that playing IF would be the hook to writing IF. I now believe that I overlooked a significant benefit in merely reading IF as an engagement strategy, the benefits of working with a wider, cross phase community. With the wind knocked out of my sails, I have had to get creative. I have convened a guerrilla group of five Year 10 boys who meet once a week and correspond primarily online through Onenote. After all I did not want to lose sight of why I am motivated by IF, and that’s getting young people excited about writing, in whatever form that might be. More recently, a few colleagues have offered to lead the ‘exploration’ of IF in the classroom, with case studies in both Primary and Secondary schools already under way or on the agenda it is proving an exciting time for IF.
Back in August, the post title was titled, ‘With IF – Nothing is Impossible.’ Now I am working to ‘With IF – Everything is Possible….’ And with Quest ported to both Android and iOS this month, a mobile future is very exciting. I also challenged myself to introduce at least 50 educators to IF, I can safely say I have connected with at least ten interested educators and there are a handful of IF advocates discussing games, pedagogy and ideas on Twitter.
- @gideonwilliams Gideon Williams – Secondary
- @chrisleach78 Chris Leach – Primary
- @StephenFarmer Stephen-Lee Farmer – Secondary
- @largerama Nick Jackson – Secondary
- @DeputyMitchell David Mitchell – Primary
- @GeekyNicki Nicki Maddams – Secondary
- @danthomasnw Dan Thomas – Primary
Curious? Want to know more? Play ‘Things that go Bump in the Night‘ online, offline or on Android and iOS and chip in your first impression using the #ttgbitn hashtag, or drop me an email, comment here on the blog or search interactivefiction as a tag.
Meanwhile, we continue our on-going dialogue with exam board AQA in an effort to see if writing interactive fiction will eventually be conceived as a recognised qualification, there is certainly has enough academic substance.
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