Hello. I have been keeping my eye on this sub-forum and recently discovered the SIF (Senica Thing). It looks looks great. I am hoping to get some of my students to submit a project since it does describe online playable formats. But it does look new, it looks specific to small groups submission of only Twine.
HTML coding and web-template design is part of the Middle School curriculum in my state/USA. It is how I’ve supported projects so far for choice-based fiction. Finished projects can look much less polished than Twine, but worthwhile in exercising the art.
I’m here to ask what other educators think about a competition that would be html-based or put forward in a web-template tool in order to broaden participation in the 11-14 year old space? Please point me to any examples I might be missing.
I’m considering creating something that would focus on alternate publishing tools but I’d really hope it would be supported by the IF community. I’d also really like to rely on the existing game architecture of itch.io but with my students being age 11-14, and the platform policy being 13+ for play and 18 for publishing, it looks to not be an ideal spot.
Any feedback at all on this would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve been running courses for this age group using my own website (https://visualink.mavnn.eu/) which allows sharing games via a magic link, so I’d definitely be interested in an event which allowed for submissions of games which are freely available to play. I’d be less interested in one that required submissions that are compatible with a specific site/made with a specific tool.
It would have to be thoughtfully put together from a privacy point of view though. VisualInk allows publishing but has no searchable directory of published games and does not reveal the author name or username specifically to avoid most of the safety issues, but obviously a competition host wouldn’t be able to use the same strategy as part of the point of a competition is to get public recognition.
I’ve become sidetracked by the Visualink system. It’s very promising for students to edit and offers just enough asset options to give choice without overwhelming.
I think hosting/getting a public facing link for any of the means of choice-based fiction is the easier part. Keeping user info private while doing so is the hard part. For SIF (Senica Interactive Fiction contest), if we enter, I will upload the students work to my account to submit because the tool we are using does not allow us to have pseudonyms.
It occurs to me that I have posted this topic of competition in the education category, but my motivation for the competition is rooted in learning. While I agree that competition is for public recognition, I see it in many other ways. It is a way to deepen engagement both for the interested and uninterested. Giving access to a wider stage/audience at this age is intriguing. It allows them to step into a competitive arena while also retaining some anonymity and a chance to be vulnerable. Finally, it gives these students opportunities to see what healthy online engagement looks like among strangers on the internet (which up to this point they are obstructed from and/or taught to avoid at all costs).
Well, thank you . That’s exactly what I was aiming for (and haven’t finished yet) - if you want something with more power and flexibility there’s already good options out there like https://atrament.ink/ but that’s not always helpful for teaching.
Back on topic, I agree that the publishing is the easy part and I also agree on why I (as the educator) think it would be great to have competitions available. That said, I do wonder if the entrants themselves might feel a bit shortchanged if they put the effort into an event and do well, and then the competition announces that anonymous author E23985 has won this years contest? But then maybe I’m overthinking things; there are school age competitions that have run for years and become popular without ever releasing individual results like Bebras.
I have to admit that I don’t have either the relevant legal and community building experience or the spare time bandwidth to want to start something like this from scratch, but I’d certainly be interested in helping spread the word if something was started and even offer IT advice/support if wanted.
. That’s exactly what I was aiming for (and haven’t finished yet) - if you want something with more power and flexibility there’s already good options out there like