I’m a frontend developer and I recently got a second job as a teacher at a programming school for kids. I want to add something interesting to my teaching program so that kids don’t get so overwhelmed with technical information. What interesting things can I do for them?
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You don’t mention Interactive Fiction specifically. So I’m guessing you aren’t wholly focused on storytelling 
.
Perhaps your kids would enjoy making maps? I think it would be interesting to get them to make some maps with paper and pencil (any kind of a map; dungeons, street maps, topological trails).
Then ask them how they would code it up. What data structures are required for their map, and how would they save that map to a file so it could be loaded in later?
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Try Adventuron. It’s designed to be easy to use by kids. It looks good, too. I think @adventuron did a good job.
Why not ask the kids what they find interesting, then do that?
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Hi, Tara and Everyone,
If you’re interested in working with choice-based IF, your best option is probably Twine. It’s a friendly authoring system that’s well supported.
Adrift is probably best authoring system for parser-based IF, if you want to get kids to complete a story or two quickly. But it’s Windows-only, and, I believe, it’s no longer actively supported. Quest is quite accessible to younger programmers, too, and it’s still under active support.
Inform (formerly called “Inform 7”) is probably the most popular author system for parser-based stories. It is friendly for kids, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and very well-supported.
If you’re interested in a parser-based authoring system whose source code looks a lot like that of conventional programming languages, Adventuron, as mentioned by Harry, is a good choice.
Peace,
Brendan
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