Sal Swims Against the Tide

For Digital Storytelling for Good w/AI

Inspiration

Our idea started out with fairytales as a means of introducing a heavy topic, such as climate change, in a way that is easy to understand and digest. Fairy tales and cartoons are impactful to all people, especially the younger generation, and so we decided to create a fairy tale of our own about Sal the Salmon who experiences the effects of climate change on his swim upstream through his river home.

What it does

Sal Swims Against the Tide is an interactive "fairy-tale" story that follows the adventure of a Salmon named Sal on his way back upstream through his river home. It introduces the effects dams have on river habitats and includes two interactive activities. The first interactive activity is a scavenger hunt-themed slide that shows multiple effects climate change can cause, all of which are covered in the last scene in depth. Our goal for Sal Swims Against the Tide is to reach out to people and raise awareness for the effects of climate change in an effort to inspire and help people band together to make a change against this pressing issue.

How we built it

We built the interactive story with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The images were generated using BlueWillow.

Challenges we ran into

We originally started with the idea of fairytales and merging fictional worlds to fight against a more widespread and devastating challenge called climate change. However, it was hard to explain succinctly and implement the original vision while learning and relearning how to code.

Additionally, we faced the challenge of building a story that could reach all ages, show the impacts of climate change in a long-term view, and broach the heavy topic of climat change without boring or turning people off.

We also started working on a scrapbook at the end, but it required some additional work and time, so we had to pivot and show a slider with real-world examples that were learning extensions of the original story.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For a team that has limited coding experience and/or has not coded in almost half a year, we made a decent story with interactivity that both supports the story and facilitates learning. We also learned a lot about salmons and dams and how they relate to climate change along the way.

What we learned

We learned how to collaborate as a team, challenge ideas, pivot strategies, and, of course, code!

What's next for Sal Swims Against the Tide

Learning more code to implement the fuller long-term vision for this story.

Built With

• bluewillow
• css
• html
• javascript