Sunday, January 31, 2016

Dragon Quest! A Google Slides Interactive Story

Growing up in the 80’s meant reading loads of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. They were fun, and a little scary, and you died pretty much every time, but they got lots of kids into books. A while back I decided to bring this idea off the page and into the 21st century by using Google Slides to create an online, interactive story.

Often we think of Google Slides in terms of linear presentations, with one slide after another in order. However, Google Slides allows you to add hyperlinks to your presentation which can link to other slides within the presentation when clicked. This allows you to create a nonlinear slideshow, where the user can branch off to multiple different slides from any one slide.

Linking to other slides can be used to create quizzes where each answer choice leads to a different slide to let you know if you got the correct answer. It can also be used to build an interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” story where each slide offers choices that lead to different parts of the story.

And so was born “Dragon Quest”!

Well to be fair, the story was actually written many years ago by my students. Back when I was a middle school teacher one of our projects was to have students work in teams to create their own “Choose Your Own Adventure” story. The students wrote all the text and drew all the pictures. “Dragon Quest” was one of those stories, which I have transformed into an interactive Google Slides presentation.

This can be a great project for your students. Google Slides makes it easy for them to add text, insert images, link the “pages” together, and share their story online for everyone to access.

If you are brave though, and ready to face the dragon, it’s time for your adventure to begin. To access my example interactive slideshow story click the link below:

Create your own interactive slideshow story

If you would like to create your own interactive stories, or have your students create them, see below for several resources I have made to help you with this process. There is a  one-hour training video, a detailed help guide, and a slideshow overview.




Resources
 Help guide - "Beyond the Slideshow" - https://bit.ly/curts-slides
 Slideshow - "Beyond the Slideshow" - Google Slides link
 Training video - "Google Slides for Stories, Quizzes, and Games" - YouTube link 
If you or your students create interactive slideshow stories, I would love to see your examples. Please feel free to share in the comments below, or let me know if you have any questions.


Post by Eric Curts
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3 comments:

  1. +Eric Curts I have a teacher wanting to try this with 7th Graders but as we all know Middle Schoolers aren't always the most motivated. I was wondering if anyone had a good source for stories that students could use to create their "Choose Your Own Adventure" Google Slides

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    1. I start with Rory's Story Cubes! They're a wonderful way to start stories with Middle Schoolers. If you purchase the app, you can also buy a couple extra (in-app purchase) sets of cubes and only have spent about a 1/3 of the money as if you'd bought the physical game. A great go-to, especially for creative writing and perfect for this project!

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