Hello everyone
I would like to explore the use of IF in education. Are you aware of any related applications / publications?
As I am new to the field, I was wondering if there are any specific terms I should use during my research to retrieve more accurate results?
Looking forward to hearing from you
Here are some resources to do with how Inform has been used in education. I know other tools have been as well, particularly Twine and Quest, so those might be search terms that turn up interesting results also.
http://inform7.com/teach/
http://inform7.com/news/category/education/
You probably want to have a chat with DavidC of TextFyre and Alex the Quest developer.
Textfyre is/was an attempt to bring IF-related material to the classroom. I still think this is an extremely viable solution, but working into classrooms requires a complex set of resources and effort. In seven years I have failed at pulling those resources together. I was just at a meetup a couple of weeks ago with some industry leaders. It was a small gathering and one of the speakers was quoted as saying, “we need an adaptable, engaging, interactive curriculum that has formative (embedded) assessment for both the student and teacher”.
I wanted to shout, “HEY THAT’S WHAT I DID!”, but I really don’t have the entire thing put “together”. I have pieces. Missing some pieces I could build myself in time and missing other pieces that really requires an experienced curriculum developer.
Ed-tech is hard. Your mileage may vary.
David C.
www.textfyre.com
Alright, first of all, wow 
and thanks for all the pointers. These are already quite a few steps beyond what i had in mind, which was simply to explore the question of whether or not IF could be used effectively as an alternative means of explaining a (complex) subject to a group of people. This could be a case-control study with a “control” group being offered the typical series of lectures and an “effect” group being offered the IF series of lectures and then examine who picked up key details or even what sort of differences were there in their grades.
It’s not that IF is a game and therefore expected to be appealing to students. For me, it’s the exploration character of the game that bears value. Still, IF might not be appealing for everyone…I think that persons who engage with IF are people who have a lot going on inside them. There is already an internal dialogue with things like “what if? what does this mean? what will happen if i try this?”. People who like bouncing ideas off of other people and get thought triggers from the unfolding discussion might not like the IF mode at all.
I am a 7th grade tech teacher trying to use IF. I have developed a web based tool hosted at textadventure.net. It is basically Inform-lite. If you are interested in it, please email me (evancwright@yahoo.com). I am trying to find teachers to test it out. I’m trying to design it so that it is super-convenient from the teacher’s point of view.
Hi, All,
If you like, have a look at “Teaching and Learning With Interactive Fiction” at bdesilets.com/if/WhyInform7.pdf)
Have a great day.
Peace,
Brendan Desilets