Using the Stanley Parable lesson as a general guide, I spent a portion of my day yesterday streaming The Stanley Parable for my 9th grade students. I offered it more as a supplemental lesson, building upon concepts that we had tackled earlier in the year. YouTube was the platform of choice for my session, allowing students to chat via text with each other.
Throughout, I posed questions to them regarding omniscient narration, perspective, and choices, particularly how the game uses these concepts in ways that would be difficult to convey in a written text. I also had students make choices in the game and reflected on how the narrator felt about their individual choices. My student audience mostly decided to disobey the narrator (not too surprising), and most of them assumed the narrator was the antagonist right off the bat. That might say more about my students than the game!
This was my first time live streaming, and it was quite a unique experience. For example, the first "ending" that our run ended up on was a sequence during which you are forced to repeatedly jump off a ledge, harming yourself. I pulled an audible and manually restarted the game.
My hope is that my students learned a bit about the terms that I selected, but more importantly I know I was able to provide some entertainment and interaction with them during this tough time. A reissue of The Stanley Parable is coming out this year, so if you haven't checked it out before, I highly recommend it. Also, if your hardware allows, live streaming a game is a great way to connect with your students during this truly weird time. Thanks again, Zack, for the lesson plan!
Thank you so much for sharing this! It's funny, when I originally played this whit my students, they ended up with that same first ending. And they also wanted to go against the narrator as well.
Also for anyone who wants to see more, Mr. Belmont has a video of his stream available here. Definitely check it out!