New possibilties for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

The fourth grade Choose-Your-Own-Adventure project was always one of my favorites, but was too difficult for many, even with lots of scaffolding, and not as relevant a skill set as blogging, so I've relegated it to an after-school club.

I've always hoped to expand the project, though--to incorporate video into the adventure, for example, or to include a historical fiction element, for example, as with the revolutionary war-based adventures or the age of exploration ones that included one branch that was what really happened in the life of the student's chosen explorer and others that imagined what might have happened had the explorer chosen differently.

Here is a lovely example of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure done by design critic/novelist Rudolph Delson that serves as both a witty and entertaining adventure, and a thoughtful critique of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I love that way Delson has used the CYOA structure in a fresh new way, and will keep this in mind as inspiration for future projects.

CYOA sites out, blogs in

The choose-your-own-adventure website project was always one of my favorites, in theory. I loved the idea--the way it emphasized the non-linear qualities of writing and reading online, the way it gave kids such freedom in their writing and sparked their imaginations, and the sense of accomplishment they felt when the sites went up and were published to the world.

I was so discouraged, however, by the numbers of kids who were frustrated in the project--who were either super slow typers or just didn't get the concept of hypertext and linking, or both. In small groups, I could support those kids, but I didn't have enough opportunities to take them in small groups.

In addition, less and less web publishing is being done with Dreamweaver and privately hosted sites, and more and more is blog-based, so it just made sense to be shift the focus to blogging.

So starting this year, the CYOA website project has become an after-school kids-club, and in class, all fourth graders will blog instead! I know I may regret committing to moderating posts and comments from 130 kids every week, but I really think it will be worth it. And I know that the kids who had trouble with Dreamweaver may have trouble with this, too, but the satisfaction of publication comes much more quickly (and with comments!), and that extra motivation should help.

Choose-your-own-adventure sites

The fourth graders are so close to finishing their choose-your-own-adventure websites! They mapped out the stories, typed and formatted the pages in Dreamweaver, linked and tested them, illustrated in Kidpix, and their work will soon be up on our school site. Meanwhile, check out last year's sites.