Teaching with Frankenstories ARCHIVED 202404

Game 4: Classes, teams, homework

While playing in big groups can be fun, there are downsides:

  • There are limited opportunities to contribute an entry to the final story
  • Weaker players might tune out
  • Lots of tiebreaking rounds can slow the game down.

Solution: play in smaller groups

Smaller groups provide:

  • More opportunities to have an impact on the story
  • More cohesive group dynamic
  • Opportunities to compare responses to the same prompt.

With Frankenstories Pro, you can create a class, invite your students to join, and then either:

  • Assign a game to random teams
  • Assign a game to sub-classes, or
  • Assign the game as individual homework.

All of these options require moving from casual games to game templates.

FS Templates

  1. Create a class and get your students to join.
  2. Create a random game but save it as a game template.
  3. Assign the game template to your class and divide the class into random teams.
  4. When you want to play the game, tell students to join it in their My Games view.
  5. Open each game in a new tab and start them when you're ready.

To use the small group features, you need to create a class and your students need to create accounts.

Note: Student accounts use custom codes (no email or passwords) and you can edit student names and codes at any time.

Instructions

Go to Class Admin > Classes > Create class.

FS Create class

Give the class a name and an optional description.

FS Create class form

Tell your class to Register as students and join with the class code.

  • If they already have a Frankenstories/Writelike account, they can simply log in with their student code and use the class code to join the new class.

FS Class code

Notes

  • You can edit student names.
  • You can display and regenerate student codes.
  • You can create additional "classes" and add or invite your existing students to serve as differentiation groups.
  • Tip: Tell your students to email themselves their student codes or save them as a note on their device desktop.

If you have created a class and saved a prompt as a game template, you can assign it to the class and then divide the class into random teams.

FS Divide into teams

In Frankenstories, a "class" is simply a group of students. 

You can create as many classes as you want and arrange students in whatever way you like, including having students in smaller differentiated groups.

FS Differentiation groups

You probably only want to use Approval Mode on 1-2 games at the same time, otherwise you'll find it too complicated jumping between them.

When you assign a game to random teams or multiple classes, every instance of the game will inherit the same Approval Mode setting.

Our advice would be to assign the game with Approval Mode turned off, and then edit the game settings for the 1-2 groups you want to supervise to turn it on again (or vice versa).

Frankenstories actually works really well as an individual timed-writing activity (where each round forces you to keep moving forwards).

If you want to assign a game as an individual "homework" activity, simply choose the class and relevant students.

FS Homework

What to expect

At this level, games reflect the skill of the players. There’s less noise from crowd dynamics.

  • If players are skilled and having fun, the game will be good.
  • If players struggle with ideas and expression, the game might be perfunctory and unsatisfying.
  • In smaller groups, players feel more individually responsible and emotionally affected by perceived success and failure.

This is the point where you can start to take the games more seriously, and get a little more deliberate about learning.

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