Digital Binder Entry # 8

Consider interactive nonlinear storytelling and environment design. How it can enhance user experience or learning?. Briefly describe 3 ideas/activities that you could use in your educational/professional practice.

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I have just finished the digital museum workshop project and it was really fun to figure out how to connect slides and connect the rooms and objects so that the visitor to the museum could feel like they had control over which artifacts they wanted to view first or which room to go first. In my case, I used my home as a museum and displayed my drawings in my kitchen, bathroom, etc.. While I was deeply engrossed in the work such as making objects and links, it felt as if I was creating an online game where I was giving my gamers the choices as to how they wanted to move around my home, to see which rooms first and view which exhibits (drawings).

If my own students do this project in the classroom, I think that they can have a lot of fun, too! I can see why you call it nonlinear, because you allow your viewers to have the choices of where they want to go first or do what first. Then the story can go off on a tangent and they can have a roller-coaster ride! I can also see why game developers are desperately looking for story writers, because the other day I was told that I could seriously look into becoming a story writer for an online game company. The museum piece I did today has a certain story element in it too, but I could develop a more convoluted story if I had time. I love writing more interesting, more complex stories and I think I can do nonlinear stories for the gaming companies, too.

Students can use a lot of their creativity when they do a project like this, and I am pretty sure that there are creative minds amongst our students. They can imbue their own museum or whatever game they are creating with their own life experiences and personal voices and jokes and insights. This will quickly lead them away from passive learning (P of PICRAT) and towards (C of PICRAT). I would say that a project like this can turn the classroom into an exciting storytelling board meeting for every participant in the classroom!