Snippet Queen


I joke when I teach, I am the queen of snippets, in that I rarely ever finish an entire project, but full of code examples, "snippets", that I post for class use that spring from learner questions. This time, I'm going to finish an entire one using Twine2, doing so to prepare setting up a meeting with the Twine inventor, Chris Klimas, to see what we can do to take Twine2 to the next level for use in K-12 education. My Twine2 project, "Who did it in the Woods?" is a compendium of Twine2 macros/css scripting that kids in my 5 week 2017 SEP session mastered with an eye to 8-10 year old storyline mentality -- animals and poop are win-win that follows a classic "Clue" board game game strategy (solve a mystery via process of elimination - pun intended!). I'm working on adding this project html file to my github repository, so once it's done (scripted) and added to github, I'll post a link so you can check out the game and let me know what you think!

So far, my draft message to Chris about improving Twine2 for kids:

What can we do to make Twine version transition easier? I'm pretty tech savy, but guest teaching at UVa, 36 kids on shared PCs (Macs are a rarity in public education) for which I had no admin privileges and no IT support really caused a problem when the Twine2.1 version was released in the middle of my 5 week session, 1-Feb 2017. I see this being a major barrier to using Twine in the typical classroom. Kids simply could not access or save work and it really turned a bunch of them off it, especially since I only had them for 5 weeks, 10 hours total.

I'm concerned about the adult content of published Twine stories.Is there a way to firewall NSFC material or at least challenge access by age to enter? Or to set up project/code repositories by material suitability? I was really excited to find and purchase the ebook "Videogames for Humans", but none of the Twine stories featured were at all appropriate for kids! I'd love to come up with a kid version of this resource  without violating copyright; perhaps I'll follow up with the author, Meritt Kopas to see what we can work out?