I’ve stumbled onto a rather remarkable thing about Twitch when combined with a really good chat bot: people interact with it and learn even when I’m AFK (usually sleeping or working). Even better, their interactions with the bot are collaborative. The fact that Twitch uses IRC makes these even better. People don’t even have to use Twitch at all. At that point, Twitch just becomes an educational, community IRC channel with a graphic interface and pretty fishies or music or whatever. This makes Twitch the single best place to produce autonomous, interactive educational material (or group-driven interactive fiction, for that matter).
My immediate concern about doing this is all the false notifications that people will still get about me, potentially causing them to unsub, but I already have that problem because 95% of my streaming is me silently working on screen. I think the trade off is worth it – especially now that there is something to interact with even when I’m away. People can use Twitch like an interactive, educational story game of sorts and just try out all the different bot commands (which is even more reason I need to get my own bot in place that has an educational community focus, now that is something I could definitely present as ISTE).
20220401092257 Using Twitch for Group Interactive Fiction Games
#twitch #edtech #bot #education #streaming #edchat