KSS – Interactive Storytelling with Twine
- Location: Kahnawake Survival School (KSS)
- Date: January 28, February 2, February 15
- Duration: 3 sessions of 2 hours each
- Instructors: Vanessa Racine, Nancy Townsend, Caeleigh Lightning, Taylor McArthur
Overview:
The Skins Team is back at Kahnawake Survival School, where we did the very first iteration back in 2008! In this round, we worked with a 7th grade English class, teaching Interactive Storytelling with Twine, where students created their own text-based games over three, two-hour sessions. Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive and nonlinear stories such as visual novels and decision-based games. Learning how to use Twine introduces students to a set of skills that can be applied in many other disciplines, such as game and software development, and even AI (Artificial Intelligence)!
This time, we gave the participants some goals to reach: to create a story with seven passages, two endings, and a passage that loops back to a previous section. Starting off on paper, students mapped out how their stories were going to go. After the on-paper brainstorming, we began the second session with Twine, introducing the tool and how to use it, along with some HTML basics. Students worked at formatting their stories and making sure all their passages linked up. In the last session, the students worked on adding CSS elements, along with playtesting their games; – an essential aspect to web development!
At the end of the workshop, students had stories ranging from trips to the coffee shop, bunnies in New York, and a game leading the reader to a haunted building.
We are grateful for the extra support from the classroom teacher and assistant who helped us keep the students on track! We’re excited to continue our ongoing relationship with KSS as we continue to offer more workshops to their students.
Funded in part by:
