Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction

[Brendan Desilets]

Hi, All,

I hope this posting finds you well.

"Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction" is a web site for
kids
and teachers who are interested in IF.  The site offers a great deal
of
pedagogical theory and practice for teachers, much of it derived from
articles in _The English Journal_ and _Currents in Electronic
Literacy_.  For kids, the site has an introduction to interactive
fiction, recommendations for interactive stories, and ways to obtain
good IF.

New material on "Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction"
includes
an original article on how IF can help teachers to build fluency among
their student readers. There’s also an expanded Inform 7 tutorial.

For kids, the site now recommends a list of forty-three IF stories,
many of them playable online, using Parchment.

"Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction" has been on the web
for
years, but it has a relatively new URL:
http://if1.home.comcast.net

Please stop by and have a look, if you like. I'm always interested in
your comments and suggestions.

Peace,
Brendan Desilets

[Jim Aikin]

On 4/30/2010 3:22 AM, Brendan Desilets wrote:

> "Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction" is a web site for
> kids
> and teachers who are interested in IF. The site offers a great deal
> of
> pedagogical theory and practice for teachers, much of it derived from
> articles in _The English Journal_ and _Currents in Electronic
> Literacy_. For kids, the site has an introduction to interactive
> fiction, recommendations for interactive stories, and ways to obtain
> good IF.

I'm glad to learn about your site!

You might want to make it a bit easier for casual visitors by steering
them first and foremost to games that are readily available. "Arthur" is
not in that category, unfortunately.

I'm not 100% convinced that the heavy jargon in the "Good Thinking" page
won't put people off. "Metacomponent" is not a word that I'd often throw
into casual conversation, not even if I were chatting with a teacher
about the learning process.

You've got a link to a page (www.cs.cmu.edu/~wsr/IF/) that still
references ftp.gmd.de as the location of the archive. So perhaps a
little cleanup work would be useful.

I may have more comments later, if I get around to it. Hope you find
these useful.

--JA

[Mary Dooms]

Brendan,

In my search of appropriate IF works for my 6th grade students, I've
become familiar with your website. In fact, Jim, who has responded to
you, was very helpful to me when I ran into problems with a work one
of my students had created. The following thoughts are quite random,
so please bare with me.

I would LOVE an organized collection of readily accessible and
appropriate IF for middle school students. Your list is a great start.
If works have limited availability or are "out of print" I would list
them in another category. If your top fifty list could be delineated
further by age appropriateness, genre, "lexile" that would be helpful.
I checked out Photopia on Parchment and was distressed to see the f
word within the first 5 lines of the story. On your site you suggest
sensoring by deleting the reference. I'm new to IF so I wonder how I
would do that. I know Baf has a list of files to download. If you
mention sensoring, a direct link and set of instructions on how to do
it would be helpful too.

You have an incredible number of helpful links on the Teaching with
Interactive Fiction page. Perhaps some page layout with respect to
breaking up the list and shortening the names of the links should be
considered. For example: "Ways to help students recognize problems
through interactive fiction" could be titled "Problem Solving". Then,
when the link is clicked, a new page opens with wide margins and lots
of white space.

If you are looking to expand the teaching beyond literary elements and
reading comprehension, you could include:

a small study on using IF in foreign language studies.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t716100697

Utah State's work with Myth Mechanic and Voices from Spoon River
http://cle.usu.edu/CLE_IF_MM.html
(the link Jim references)

Historical Simulations in the Classroom
http://www.historicalsimulations.net/inform/inform.htm

If you have links you could share with me, I would love to look at
them.

On your site, you mention a collection of works available for
download. I was hesitant to download it because the file pointed to
something called solarcarsxxxxx. Others may feel the same way not
wanting their computer to get a virus.

There are just random thoughts for you to use or refuse.

[grma...@gmail.com]

Very interesting, thanks!

[Dannii]

Here's a play list I've used with high school kids: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=kothb0hqbabhalbl

[HappyMacXL]

Hi Brendan,

I'm currently using IF as a way of learning whilst playing with my two young sons.

May I ask please could you recommend IF for younger kids - my sons are 4 and 6.

Thanks!

Adam