Module 3: Interactive Learning with Twine

This week I had the opportunity to explore Twine, a platform used to create story-mode games and narratives. It can be an excellent source to use for educational purposes. Students can be taught through storytelling by teaching concepts and giving students the option to choose different courses of action. I explored this option when creating my Twine based on how some students may feel when receiving a bad grade or working towards a certain grade for an assignment. The takeaway of the Twine is to not give up, everyone can do it, as long as there is effort and dedication. Using Twine allowed me to share the story through an interactive decision-based game offering users to make some sort of choice when it comes to the direction of the narrative.

Reflection Questions

In the reading this week, “7 Storytelling Techniques Used by the Most Inspiring TED Presenters”, which of the presenters did you find most compelling? What technique(s) did you recognize in their talk?

After reading 7 Storytelling Techniques Used by the Most Inspiring TED Presenters, I found Dananjaya Hettiarachchi’s speech the most compelling. He uses a flower as an analogy to symbolize that we all have something special in all of us, even if we don’t know it yet. These were the techniques that I recognized in his speech:

• Immerse your audience in a story: He opens his speech by showing the audience a flower. He also uses hand gestures, facial expressions, descriptive words and humour that keep the audience engaged.
• Tell a personal story: He shares a personal story of the struggles he went through but came out of it as a motivated individual.
• Create suspense: He starts to pluck the petals of the flower and takes pauses and stares into the audience during his story to add suspense.
• Bring characters to life: He explains the feelings of his mom and dad when he was going through the struggles. He uses descriptive words that automatically allow you to visualize them.
• Show. Don’t tell: He started his speech with the flower and then brought back the analogy at the end. The message behind his speech becomes stronger by using the analogy of the flower.
• End with a positive takeaway: He ends the speech by telling everyone to believe that we all have beautiful and special qualities to offer to the world

What storytelling techniques have you used instinctively and which ones require more work for you? 

While creating my story, I wanted to really use the immerse your audience in a story technique. I did this by adding photos and music to each passage to create an engaging story. It was not easy adding these elements to my story, but I knew the importance of it and did not give up. I learned to code and watched tutorials on ways to elevate a story on Twine. I also wanted to ensure to end with a positive takeaway, the message at the end is that everyone struggles in school, but to not give up and not feel afraid to ask for help. I also added the create a suspense technique at the beginning of my story with the low-grade passage and asking the user to choose what to do next. I found the immerse your audience in a story technique the hardest to do because I had to learn how to use Twine and at the same time create a story that is engaging.

Conclusion

I enjoyed exploring the world of storytelling in this module. It really shows how we can all use narratives to get an important point across, but also to educate others. Twine allowed me to explore my creative side and I also saw the complexity of creating a story and how each passage plays an important part in creating a story.