Hey, folks. I am a computer teacher at a public elementary school. I've written up a thing about my experiment teaching Twine for three weeks to a group of fourth- and fifth-graders. In place of the code.org curriculum.
This was just a small class of 22 kids. I have a class during the day that all the kids in the school take - however, not all the kids can read and write yet, so I may wait until the end of the year before trying it out with the wider audience.
Thanks to the devs for a sweet tool! Hope to have more to share in the future.
Thank you. I ended up doing an extra class for this - we covered using HTML tags to add images, audio and video. I like that Twine can be used as a precursor to HTML - almost like a Wiki, but not so boring.
I think there's something sweet about Twine that draws kids in. I showed it to one of my friend's kids (13) and he loves it. I think it's the fact that they can do something non-linear, and then they can actually see the finished product and play with it. I think it's more the sense of achieving something that draws them in, and it shows them they can actually do something with technology and it doesn't have to be overly complicated.
I think it's more the sense of achieving something that draws them in, and it shows them they can actually do something with technology and it doesn't have to be overly complicated.
@AntonMuerte Yes, you're right - you only have to know how to make links and you can be productive. I also think Twine's advantage is that it has a somewhat narrow focus on the creation of stories. Which means these kids can start with the thought, "Okay, what do I want in my story?" and start from there. Rather than starting with, "Here's a windowing application and some buttons - now I need to thinking of something I could make with that..."