BeadED Adventures

With the move towards digital interventions for educational purposes, there has been a loss of tangible and material interfaces, the consequences of which are still being understood. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing lack of gender diversity within STEM-facing majors and careers. In response to this, we have created a physical prototype of BeadED Adventures, a system that uses a physical controller made up of jars of colorful beads to control modified Twine games that follows constructivist philosophies of learning and emphasizes player autonomy. By controlling the experience, the player creates a beaded bracelet that is personalized based on their choices within the game. In addition to the controller, we are creating an educational Twine game in which the player explores an abandoned castle, solving computational thinking puzzles to escape.