Week 6 Famous Last Words: Playing with Twine

So last week was pretty terrible (I need to start limiting how much news I read...), so when Saturday arrived I just wanted to have fun with writing and stories, and I DID. I started off making some little slideshows for 100-word-story-reveals so that the story comes in little pieces, and I think they turned out great. I can imagine that is something I can develop into a really useful tool for teachers. I made two of them today as a Microfiction extra credit: Two Anansi Stories. 

And then I started playing with Twine..... which is always dangerous. I made a game I called Aesop Survivor, and it turned out really fun I think. So, I decided to make my Storybook for Myth-Folklore be about Twine games! I've got this Aesop Survivor, and then I was thinking of a Nursery Rhyme maze, and also a Buddhist Jatakas game where instead of dying and being out of the game, that's how you progress, being reincarnated as another animal. And then I want to do a proper game, with real game programming (so that you win/lose points, etc., maybe with special powers and objects) that will be an Anansi game, a "can you outwit Anansi?" type of game. So I redesigned my Storybook coverpage to be about Aesop Survivor, and I put that story page up already. That made me feel really good, and I'm so excited about the other games too.

So, it was great to be able to do that, and I had some fun yesterday making a new poster for the Latin blog: Cornutam bestiam petis!

Even just doing a little poster like that makes me feel good... and I need this creative fun stuff to feel good because when I read the news, I get so depressed, and I am really angry at OU about the P/NP petition right now: when I saw 2000 students sign that petition in less than 24 hours, I thought for sure the university would use the petition as the excuse they needed and that they might even adopt P/NP not just for Fall but for Spring too (surely that would boost Spring enrollment, which is their goal, right?). But they already issued a statement that they are not going to consider P/NP grading this semester.

Still, I won't give up, and I'll just keep pounding away at it. When there is so much beyond our control, it just makes me angry that they will not use the power they do have to help people out by granting a P/NP option.

I also got all fired up about data privacy again when Dr. Chuck and I taped our presentation for Educause this week. That turned out GREAT I think... we're scheduled to "present" on October 29, so that's something to look forward to anyway. I don't like Zoom at all, but Dr. Chuck made it fun, and I was really glad to have a chance to be part of the presentation.