Unit 6
MAD-LEARN 2021
Mobile App Development

Discovery
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https://mad-learn.com/
Part 8: Write, Design & Create your Animal Choose Your Own Adventure
​OR Part 7: Teach & Quiz - Flashcards and Interactive Quiz

STEP 22: Creating your own Choose Your Own Adventure Style interactive story. You'll make your reader experience life as your animal, experiencing the world from your animal's point of view. 
So far, you have done some great research, and created a great Mobile App using MAD-Learn software. Now you are being asked to create (write) some content that will really make your Mobile App pop.  You will use the HCJ Builder template in MAD-Learn to build an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Story (that you wrote) with many choices, endings, and adventures for your audience -- all having to do with your animal.

ASK:  Write and code a Choose Your Own Adventure story
Constraints:
  1. Make your reader your animal. This means you are writing from a 2nd person point of view, but that "you" is your animal.​ 
  2. Include facts and information about your animal as you can. Predators, illnesses, hunters, poachers, natural prey, starvation, climate change, etc. 
  3. Use the Chose Your Own Adventure Format (second person POV) AND make the "you" into your animal if you can.
  4. Have a minimum of 5 choice paths with 2 choices at each point. (Minimum of 10 choices) (Easy Template).  You may choose the Medium or the Hard Template as well, if you are getting into the CYOA stories.
  5. Include some bad and good outcomes:
    1. "You die," "You are trapped," "You are separated from your group," "Your species goes extinct," etc. 
    2. "Your survive", "You found a mate," "You have an offspring." "You escaped," etc. 

​STEP 23: Understand and experience for yourself what what a Choose Your Own Adventure story is generally.
Example Story from Ms. Miller's Manatee CYOA.  
  1. ​You are a Florida Manatee. You are a mammal living in the warm waters off the coast of Florida and the Caribbean Islands. You are a special animal that is still alive today, but you are endangered. You are at the mouth of Chrystal River, Florida. You see a patch of sea grass floating near the surface of the water just ahead of you.
    1. Do you want to go eat it? Eat it - Click Here.
    2. Do you want to dive deeper?  Dive - Click Here.
  2. You dove deeper which is good, because a speedboat just went by and the boat's propeller could have cut your back.  You are a slow swimmer. You are hungry though because you need to eat about 30 pounds of vegetation daily. You lucked out, you spotted some seagrass deeper down underwater.
    1. Do you go eat it? Eat it - Click Here.
    2. Do you continue to swim on?   Swim - Click Here.
  3. You decided to eat the sea grass. As you swim towards it, you get tangled in invisible fishing line. 
    1. Do you pull away?
    2. Do you stop swimming and see if it floats off of you? Pull - click here.  Stop - click here.

STEP 24: Now understand another style of CYOA.
Pick any of the following stories. You may watch more than one.
​24a. The Blue Fin War

This is a Choose Your Own Adventure Online called "The Blue Fin War" by Reade Boccaccio.  
  1. Click on the picture of the title page.
  2. Read the first page.
  3. Read page 2.
  4. Choose to "Go down and accept it turn to pg 3"
  5. No page turning needed, page 3 is the very next page.
  6. Read page 3.  Choose "Follow them turn to pg 5"
  7. Turn to page 5, read it. The end.
  8. Now go back and choose another adventure on your own.
Now this is just a quick preview book, but you can imagine how many choices you could have for your own adventure with your animal.  

24b. Art-Detective.  This is a text-based, tech-interactive CYOA story.

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This has graphics which yours will not.

24c. Survive.   This is four layers deep into a text-based, tech-interactive CYOA story that looks similar to how yours will look. It does involve a weapon, which yours will not.

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Go into the jungle.
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Move Away from the Animal Noises.
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Fire the rescue flare to attract the ship's attention.
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Fire the pistol to attract the ship's attention.

24d.  The Oregon Trail - This is one of the original CYOA video games.  This is a recreation of the online original version of the first video game to hit schools - way back in the 1980s.

This is similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure you will be creating. But, this game has too many choices. Yours will only have two each time. To try to play it, you use your keyboard. 

24e-h.  Looking at these are OPTIONAL -- OPTIONAL --- OPTIONAL. 
These are some deeper-dives into text-based, tech-interactive, Choose Your Own Adventure style novels. Yes, these are full length book samples. DO NOT spend more than 60 minutes in this rabbit-hole.  I know some of you love to read, but if you've gotten here, you can only spend 1-hour here.  These are adult-level and may be more violent than you are used to in elementary school. Looking at these are OPTIONAL.  They are way more complex than you are being asked to create, but most of you said you had never seen a CYOA style book, so here are 4 four samples I found online in the CYOA style.  Actual CYOA books are generally less complex. Technology does allow for more complex choice algorithms.

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The Fielder’s Choice is a full length novel and then some. It's a 115,000-word interactive baseball novel by Nathaniel Edwards. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
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Silverworld is a big full-length novel, a 560,000-word interactive time-travel fantasy novel by Kyle Marquis, where your choices control the story.
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Text-based Choose Your Own Adventure. You are a Canadian Soldier on the Western Front. This has images which you will not have.
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This is a text-based CYOA style story that is online. This particular CYOA has much more complexity than yours will have. This one also has a role-playing-game features you will not have in your story.

STEP 25: Now BACK TO YOUR PROJECT......Point of View
​Writing from your animal's perspective versus writing in CYOA Style. 

Here are two examples of the different types of points of view.
​    

25a. Animal's POV 
"Jadie Flies Away - The Misadventures of a Naughty Parrot" by Dr. Jo

"Jadie Flies Away" is written from the animal's perspective in first person point of view. Or, first animal POV.  Notice "I my me" word choice?
     Hello! I am Jadie Bird Johnson, and this is my story.

25b. Choose Your Own Adventure style "Pandemic" by Sammy and Chloe Kramer

"Pandemic" is written in the style of CYOA, which is second person point of view. Notice "You, your, we" word choice?
     You are stuck at home and bored and you can't
     go outside because Earth is under lockdown. There's
     a deadly disease and now the whole world can be exposed.   
           What can you do?
                  Play a board game - Go to Page 10.  
                  Watch a movie - Go to page 18.
                 Go to the park - Go to page 8.
STEP 26: Get ready for setting up your decision tree for your CYOA. 
  1. Read about CYOA books on Wikipedia. Preview the Description about CYOA Books. (Link) (spend no more than 15 minutes).
  2. Look at this Diagram of a decision tree, below.  (10 minutes) Ask yourself the following questions. You do not need to turn these answers in.
    1. What do you think it means? What do you notice? Patterns? Colors? Shapes? What does it remind you of in real life?
    2. I think the lines stop at squares. Could these be the endings? If so, I count about 30 endings. How many do you count?
    3. Does every choice lead directly to an ending?
    4. I see little circles with white triangles in them. What do you think they mean? I think those are pass-through pages with no choices, just pages read like a normal book. 
    5. What do you think the bigger white center circles with navy blue rings are? Maybe the choices.
    6. How many choices do you see? I think I count 47. Do you could the same number?
    7. Some of these colors are the same.  I wonder if the same endings are the same colors, but the reader can get to them several ways.
    8. I wonder what those dotted lines mean? What do you think?
  3. Watch the two videos below the Decision Tree. 
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The Decision Tree for one CYOA book.

Second Person Point of View in Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

STEP 27: PICK a Decision Tree Template. Your Decision Tree Templates -- Pick an Easy, Medium, or Hard Template

Take a look at the three templates that Ms. Miller has prepared for you. You can choose which level of detail and creativity you want. These are templates, so you can change them as you want to.  You can also delete the two levels that you are not doing.  They are always here. So, if you delete slides and then change your mind, just come back here and download the file again.
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Easy Template
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Medium Template
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Hard Template

STEP 28: Begin writing your story into the squares on your Decision Tree Template.

When you get to your first introduction slides that pass through (can be more than one slide), and your first decision slide, and your first two choice slides make sure you show Ms. Miller on a Wednesday session so you don't get too far into creating the story in a way that will not work.     

If you are waiting on Ms. MIller to continue your story, you may type or write more of the story out. You may also go to Step 22 and explore that step. 

STEP 29: See if you can detect the Decision Tree in this student example.This is a student CYOA, created in Google Slides. We will discuss if you are going to make your CYOA in Google Slides or MAD-learn HCJ slides and coding.

Real Choose Your Own Adventure stories are very complex, because there are many choices and outcomes. Some Choices loop back into other stories. Yours will be much less complex, but it will still need to be carefully laid out.  

Deeper Dive -- Computer scientist Christian Swinehart has made some amazing visualizations on how a Choose your Own Adventure works at https://samizdat.co/cyoa/.  
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Click here for a great interactive view of how simple decisions and choices will work.
Really Deep Deeper Dive -- Really detailed information on CYOA mapping projects and examples. ​https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/01/24/these-maps-reveal-the-hidden-structures-of-choose-your-own-adventure-books/

STEP 30: Make your CYOA work interactively.

You should have your CYOA already written out on the Template in Google Slides before attempting this step. The template should help you with your screen numbering system to keep track of the links.  The linking of screens is complicated enough just using copy & paste, without you having to type your story for the very first time.  Go back and type your story into the template if you have not already done so.

All of you have 2 choices for making your CYOA. Choice 1 is easier to create. Choice 2 uses the HCJ Builder and is complex but doable if you are patient and persistent.
  • Choice 1 - Google Slides & Links
  • Choice 2 - HCJ Builder Template in MAD-Learn (This choice is for those who know how to code, are on schedule, and want to give this a try.

Step 30a - Choice 1: See The Secret Village in Step 22? This is a CYOA created in Google Slides. Watch this video to learn how to create this type of CYOA:

Step 30b - Choice 2: CYOA in MAD-Learn using the HCJ Builder Template. Watch this video to learn how to create this type of CYOA:
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