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The Cuban Missile Crisis Meets Coding
In his Themes in World History class, teacher Otis Pope recently asked his students to demonstrate their understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis and its impact on the Cold War by creating online narratives using Twine, an open-source tool for telling interactive, non-linear stories—think “choose your own adventure,” but online.
To prepare for this project, students worked in small groups to conduct research on this historic event, keeping in mind three overriding questions:
- What exactly took place during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- Which leaders participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- Which events led up to the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Next, students used their research to create a detailed timeline of events, using sticky notes to map out the structure of unfolding events, and divided up the necessary work for the next steps. Each student used Twine to create the “bones” of their part of the historical story in code. Each time the historical narrative presented a choice, students had to both play out history as well as design alternate historical realities if leaders involved had made different choices.
Students then enhanced their stories with photos and graphics to better reflect visually the consequences of each decision, making the experience more entertaining and immersive for the user. Despite physical distance, the HTML-based nature of the Twine tool helped students link their individual contributions to the work of their peers, allowing them to see how their efforts fit into the larger project.
On the day the assignments were due, students took turns sharing their projects with each other on Google Meet, demonstrating the various unique options and outcomes they had devised while retelling what they had learned about the crisis.
Students liked that the assignment involved both collaboration and independent work. Reflecting upon what he liked about the assignment, Pope shared, “This activity afforded students an opportunity to comprehend how choices world leaders made directly impacted the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Click here to experience an example of the work by freshmen Rania Jones, Sean Reynolds and Ty Rosse.
Francis W. Parker School educates students to think and act with empathy, courage and clarity as responsible citizens and leaders in a diverse democratic society and global community.