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Games in High School?
Joe Griego of Bishop Union High School, CA asks: "I'm the Director of I.T. for a small school district, and we've implemented a 'Game Night' for our kids. We open the lab once or twice a month, and let the kids sign up for the lab computers (we have 34 of them), and play LAN games until the wee hours. It's a lot of fun for the kids, and I enjoy seeing them use the computers for recreation, as opposed to purely academic purposes. However, my question would be - do other high schools even do this?" Judging by the post-Columbine reactions from the government, parent's groups, school systems, and the media, if a school is doing this, it's probably on the QT. Personally, I think this is a great idea, it keeps kids off of the streets and their parents know where they are. What do you think?
"I'd like to know what sorts of games would be best for this activity? We play Age of Empires II, Starcraft/Broodwar, and MechWarrior IV. I would have liked to include first person shooters (for the gameplay), but I'm limited by parental concerns, and perceptions in the community. As a school administrator and parent, I understand these concerns in a way the kids perhaps do not.
Are there other games that would be suitable for a school sponsored event? I'd love to hear about experiences at other schools."
That is really cool! At our school, we have a Cisco networking class, and we do something similar, except it's out of school. As long as they have parent permission, I think it's a great idea. Unfortunately, around here it isn't possible.. as we live in a very conservative area.
It's less violent than most games kids play these days, it requires a fair amount of real thinking (as opposed to just running around and shooting anything that moves), and it's more addictive than heroin.
At the public schools in my area (Ontario, Canada) this is highly uncommon. During normal hours you get in trouble if you are caught playing games and the admins would probably laugh at you if you proposed the idea for doing it at night because people would be messing around installing DirectX and loads of other stuff on their carefully configured boxes. Besides, people kept stealing the mouse balls so the admins super-glued the mice shut. The balls stay in there but you can't clean them, thus the mice get clogged with crap and are no use for gaming.
We didn't have a 'game night'.. But I did have 3 seats set aside purley for hacking and experimenting.. They were allowed to try to break the school network, write their own code, and generally be geeks without fear of getting in trouble for violating the school code..
The only rules were that you had to use those 3 seats (where I could easily see them) and if you cracked my network security you had to show me how you did it, and no DoS attacks on the school servers..
Death and poverty like me so much, they've brought friends!
I think it's nice to see somone that says "do something for the kids" as opposed to "Blame the video games, TV, blah, blah blah". Tie game night to grades. You get good grades you get more LAN party time! How's that for an idea??
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
I did have one teacher in high school who would let you play games that you wrote.
At my workplace, which is a private K-12.
It was a class even.
Title: The Jollity of the History of PC Gaming
Synopsis: Promoting learning of games through looking at how games have
evolved in terms of development (wads replaced with pk3), what goes into
game creation (gameplay, AI, graphics, multiplayer, etc.), and explore
the mirth of the games themselves. We will look at multiplayer games in
these terms, as well as in terms of game genre, to better organize the
learning experience.
* Exploring the evolution of game development and what games are
compossed of (WADS to PK3, sprites to models, etc.)
* Looking at how game series have progressed and changed betwee
each sequal and the kind of thinking that goes into early stages of game
planning (gameplay, graphics, multiplayer support and the like)
* Discuss how game mods have helped progress game development and
help shape the gaming industry, as well as how game modifications occur
I and three student leaders worked on the structure, and we did it for 4 days. Quake3, UT, some Red Alert 2.
Playing Chess, spades, cribbage, etc. online is just as addictive. My 65yo neighbor spends her entire life in her office playing solitare.
On the otherside, when I was on the chess team in H.S., I played 2-3 hours per day. Nobody complained about it, maybe because the graphics weren't as good.
There are many things that can be done to stimulate thnking in the game community, and many things that are better for just blowing off steam. Trying to compare quake to chess and go, or even a more modern game like Warhammer 40k isn't a good comparison. Different games use different skills...but all use skills to play well.
Seeing schools promote games is good. It's a fun way to think. Some games like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k even offer multiple aspects for development. First, the models have to be assembled and painted, then the rule books have to be read and understood, and then that understanding has to be applied to a high level of strategic thinking. I think this sort of thing would reap huge benefits if it were embraced by more families and communities. Don't like the genre? Use civil war minis and reconstruct some historical battles. See if you can beat General Lee. Heck, a kid might even voluntarily pick up a history book to learn more about it...ie. reading the historical excerpts in Civ III.
I personally don't have a problem with this, but my neighbors would. I think it's wonderful that your school can do this, but understand that it may only be temporary. Parents can threaten everything inside a school, no matter how good the intent or results.
The current political climate doesn't bode well for schools (no, I don't mean vote for Reps/Dems/Greens/etc). Schools are constantly being told what they can't do by parents, by the board, by courts, and by state and federal governments. It sucks. Much more time gets spent on what is wrong with our current education system than what's right and what will work in the long-term. Those are big political issues.
You are likely going to soon face some disgruntled parent who wants your gaming (with his/her tax dollars being used) to end. This person could be quiet about that, but likely the principle will get a phone call. And then if it doesn't end, the board of education will consider the matter. And they will kill it because by this point the initial parent got 100 other parents upset because the games being played are "evil and detrimental" to kid's development.
Mind you, the initial parent upset won't have ever let his/her child go to one of your gaming nights. Actually, this person is a terrible parent but likes to believe that he/she is a wonderful parent and thus has the right to tell every other parent how they should raise their own kids. That's just how these things work.
Really, though, I'm supportive of you. I wish we could do something like that here in my hometown with the HS kids. I think this could even be a neat way to get kids to interact with college students in CIS, engineering, etc as well as others in the tech industry. But it won't ever happen here--not on public grounds.
Oh--and you might want to find a few other games that are considered "non-violent". All the ones you listed involve some type of guns/missiles/bombs and the destruction of other's in the game. Obviously, first-person shooters are out--but maybe Civilization or Starcraft? Yeah, I know these have war as part of the game--but the goal could be considered as more constructive than simply shooting others. Heck, even silly computer card games could be "options" but not played--so at least students would be given a choice (might help when that parent complains).
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
Another use for programs such as this one:
:)
At the private high school i previously attended, they had something kind of like this. Every friday afternoon after school, the lab administrator would stay a few hours late and allow the "game club" to meet. "Game club" basically consisted of, they set up a special NT user named "games" that could only log in to the school network between 3 and 8 PM on a friday and that had special permissions to run nonstandard programs. The kids would bring in games and leave disk images of the CDROMs on the games account's network drives.
So, when game club started, all the kids that liked computer games would come in to the computer lab, install the game they decided to play that day off the network drive, have a little LAN party for a few hours on the school's really very fast computers, then delete the game off the hard drive and go home. It was fun. (They usually played Counterstrike.)
Why did they do this?
Because before the creation of games club, they had a real problem with kids coming in to rooms with school computers that had been left unattended, or the terminals in the corner of the library, and playing computer games. So the lab admin guy decided to implement a no-computer-games rule, and set up the game club as a safe-zone time the kids could just cut loose and play whatever they wanted.
The trick was, his condition was that he would only run game club if everyone agreed to follow the no-computer-games rule the rest of the time. Game club was the kids' reward/bribe for ensuring compliance.
This turned out to work beautifully. The lab admin guy couldn't be everywhere at once and police every computer, but now suddenly he had the game club-- which consisted of the school's most computer-saavy users-- doing the policing for him. If some new kid came in and started playing games, the other kids would notice and make him stop, because they were afraid of losing game club.
Unfortuantely, the year after i left, the lab administrator guy was moved to the local middle school and replaced with some new guy. The new guy didn't like the idea of game club, and ended it. I am told that in the time since then, it has become invariably true that if you go into the non-monitored computer lab during lunch, there WILL be kids playing networked computer games..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm well aware of the differences between First Person Shooters and real life and I agree 100% with your statement, but the fact is this is a SCHOOL-SPONSORED ACTIVITY and many parents will look down on violent shooting games and feel that they shouldn't be encouraged in an activity provided by a school system. It "wouldn't be prudent."
Is your browser retarded?
... Five of us who were in AP Computer Programming played fun LAN games (Novel Netwars, registered Descent and unregistered Doom) after school, with the permission of three of the admins. We stayed until 4 or 5 PM about two days each week.
When we got a second computer lab -- with high-speed 486's -- a bunch of other people wanted to play games in that lab. Unfortunatly they were a rowdy bunch. They brought in pirated versions of all kinds of network games. They infected the lab with several viruses, and messed up several computers so the admins had to rebuild the entire network. There was an official ban on computer games because of this.
The admins -- who knew the original group of us five because we always got permission and played games with them, even let them win sometimes -- told us that we could hang around doing AP Computer Programming stuff in the 386 lab on the days we had class there. We did all kinds of fun stuff with the teacher, like build fractals and even built a ray-tracer that wrote to screen (in VESA 256 colors). 45 minutes after school ended, they would let us play games. This was with the school's permission -- but under very specific rules for 5 kids.
Now that I have a MS and am looking back at those schools, I think they were right on both counts -- the should have banned the games that they did. The games they banned were violent, stolen warez. They allowed games when: (1) both a teacher and administrator were DIRECTLY responsible for the students, (2) the students had already done their homework for one class, and even did extra work for fun, and (3) the teacher was present and ensured that all software was legal.
That was 8 years ago, but I think their policy was reasonable.
If you make sure the software is legal, make sure that network problems don't happen (viruses, hacking) and have a little supervision, it can be a great thing
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
... way back in '94-96. We had a small cluster of 386-33's in the library that were used for research. There wasn't any internet access on those at the time, but they were networked via Novell to a small server that had all the library researching programs.
:) Ahhh... the joys of having 5000 turns a day, alliances and backstabbings, maxed ships. :)
:) Bolo was a big drawing point to our little group. One of us would make a new map every month or so and we'd all play on it. Dang it, you're bringing back all these fond memories.
I was the resident computer nerd at the time and had gotten addicted to TradeWars on a local BBS. So, with some sweet-talking of the librarian in charge of the server and a promise to help out even more than I already was (I was the only one around that whole district at the time who could even remotely fix any of the Macs that were in some of the labs), I had TW set up on the system. For the two hours after school, a small group of us would play that. It was fun setting up the universe and all that and it got us talking and enjoying those dull hours between the end of school and dinner. (Except the nights some of us had to work on the school newspaper...)
We tried a bit of Doom and some of the other BBS network games, but the afternoons of TW will always stick in my memory.
We did that and also used the printer-networked Mac Classics to play Bolo... LOTS of Bolo.
So, yeah, keep the games nights. Make sure to enforce fair play and decently long breaks for socialization. And keep the gore to a minimum. There's plenty of fun games out there. And also don't be afraid to do contests with single-player games... for example, we'd have Sim City races... first one to 10,000 population and $5000 wins. The Sim games can be good for those. Just be creative and don't fall into the same game every time. That keeps the minds fresh and the options interesting.
-Jellisky
Unless you are playing free as in beer games, who pays for the licenses? Do the students bring in the games and delete them when they are done? Have fun but watch your back :)
prosebeforehos.com
When I was in High School, we played Doom II, Descent, and Duke Nukem in our programming class. We had people working on levels for Doom that looked like the school. We had a bunch of really crappy old 286s, but we had a few Pentiums that could handle it.
In Middle School, we played Sim City 2000 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in homeroom, science, and English.
In Elementary School, we played Wolfenstein 3D, Nibbles, Gorillas, Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, Carmen Sandiego and a whole bunch of pirated Apple II games in various classes.
We never had a game night, instead we had teachers who would not care about what we did, or who would let us play every once in a while, or who would make us play educational games.
t'nera semordnilap
First -- I wouldn't discount board games. In particular, _Diplomacy_ and _Empires in Arms_. The former is quite simple, and emphasizes the human element -- naive people get crunched, but so do obvious monomanical conquerors once their neighbors gang up on them. The latter is incredibly complicated and requires thinking ahead (e.g. want to build a fleet? Well... it'll be finished ONE YEAR after you start, whereas militia are available in a month, regulars in three, and cavalry in seven or so), plus logistics (Want to invade Russia? In winter? Hehehehe... BWAHAHAHAHA you'd better guard your supply depot chain well, and pray for a QUICK victory).
Computer... well, there's Master of Orion I/II (pretty flexible, cooperation helps considerably, not too complex), Space Empires IV (more flexible, more complex, logistics do matter somewhat) and their ilk. Balance of Power is ancient, but may be interesting... Netrek is pretty fast-paced, and cooperation is vital against a team with even the slightest amount of clue. Rogue Spear/Urban Ops requires close cooperation between teammates, and severely penalizes gungo-ho macho-wannabes -- you can be downed in an instant, and you're not going to respawn. Bolo is another game that requires some thought and teamwork, and it's been cloned for the PC.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Of course the thing is that most of the adults that are interested in computers have their own computers at home. So mostly it was the kids coming in after school and playing games. Many grumbled about how the center was becoming an arcade, but if it weren't for the kids coming in we would have next to no one there. The centre didn't have to pay for the games since the kids would bring them in. When a major release came out like starcraft or quake 2 the place was packed. Those kids were good too... some of those capture the flag games were intense.
People would complain about how the games were violent. But I say screw it. I know most of those kids would have never had hung out with each other if it weren't for the games, and some of these kids were the really "bad" kids. I didn't really know which ones because they were all polite to me. I guess they knew I'd kick them out if they gave me any trouble.
I don't know how much they got from the games, but I know they learned about teamwork. throw 8 kids in a game of quake and you'll soon see teams form pretty quickly.
Also the kids placed a value on the computers (more value than they placed on anything else at the school). None of the kids would do anything to harm those computers and many did school projects which involved the computers. I gave some of the kids (the ones who beat me at chess) administrator priviledges. They were more than happy to help in the administration of the computers which made my job much easier.
Unfortunately after I finished working there some of the kids have since emailed me to tell me that the centre "sucked" after I left. I guess the people running the place now aren't as helpful in installing new games and the computers are beginning to show their age. And I was forced to change all the passwords before i left since they thought the kids would use their priviledges to damage the systems (yeah, right).
Maybe I'll volunteer some time to get things back going when I go home later this year... I'll have to brush up on my Starcraft skills first though :)
So much so I donated web hosting to the organization mentioned below!
In fact I agree with the 'keeps them off the streets' idea, though I feel that in reality it is more about teaching them to be comfortable with technology. My two boys go to a local Boys and Girls Club after school. They have a nice computer lab and I know my kids play game there (AoE, *Tychoon, etc.) Strategy gaming is a good thing for developing minds. I played my share of "Risk", "Pente", "Battleship" and the like in my youth, I see nothing different about Age of Empires or Civ. My sons also play chess & Risk (both analog!) on occasion too, so it is not all about technology. These "games" are really just a training ground on how to use strategy and tactics to solve an artificial problem... once the problems get real those mental muscles will have been trained. Such skills come in handy in every profession, not just the military.
--chuck goolsbee, VP, digital.forest
One more reason why I've never been to a "class reunion" - how they treated us geeks.
I for one, harbor a deep hatred towards the way schools treat atheletes vs. the way they treat scholars.
It's funny you should say this - when I was on my high school's Academic Decathlon team, our principal and our main coach decided to applaud us with letter jackets at a mandatory pep rally, before our big state competition. We did appreciate the sincerity and thoughtfulness of those adults, but when we walked into the gym, people booed and hissed, some team of jocks (who were losers competitively as well as academically) were openly making fun of us as they left the floor, and the cheerleaders just couldn't stop giggling enough to really cheer us. For the rest of the year I got teased a bit about where my "letter" was for my letter jacket, and what sport I played, etc. At least they were good for showing off to the other geeks that "our school cares." (Yeah, right!) But if I hadn't made other memories outside of school with that jacket later, i'd have put it in a homeless shelter donation bin long ago.
Oh, yeah, the next year (after I graduated), the team won the national competition - but I didn't hear of them getting much more respect, then, either... but how about that golf team!
Get off my launchpad!
A word about Fund raising. And a disclaimer, disclaimer first: I was on my highschools Academic Bowl team, in the Technology Student Association, a member of the Strategic Gaming Club, a Tutor for elementary school students, and a Wrestler, so I had experience with all of the various types of organizations at the school.
The Football team was allowed an unlimited number of fundraising events as well as their ticket sales, etc... As wrestlers we were allowed 2 fund raisers per year, as was Band, cheerleading, etc... Academic Bowl was allowed 1 fund raiser per year, TSA was allowed 0, the gaming club was allowed 0.
In Academic Bowl we were using a buzzer system that was 15+ years old and frequently didn't work properly, in TSA we had incredibly outdated equipment and very very limited tools. Wrestling hadn't had new equipment in 4 years because the money from Wrestling, Cheerleading, etc... went into a global 'Sports Activity' fund that was doled out mostly to the Softball team, which was part of that group and allowed only 1 fund raiser.
The Strategic Gaming club used chess boards, go boards, cards, etc... donated by the members or brought in to use for the sessions. We had 0$ from the school in the way of funding. When my younger brother founded the Chess club my parents paid for every chess board they had. Even when they took 12th out of 50 or so schools at the State competition, the school didn't even consider giving them any money for anything. They were allowed 0 fund raisers.
So the system whereby clubs in MY old high school were allowed to raise money for themselves was SERIOUSLY weighted against the intellectual groups and even the lesser sports. And highly skewed towards the football team. So even if we wanted to go out and try to raise money for our Gaming club, we weren't allowed to. Sucks eh?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
15 years ago, the C64 was still king. Every classroom in my elementary school had one. Many kids had a stack of games that their siblings/cousins/parents had "copied" using Renegade or whatever, but no computer. We would trade disks and hop over to a friend's house to play.
The school held an "activity" period three days a week in which children were allowed to stay after class. Those activity periods became our game time. Soon as classes were over, we'd hunt for a free machine while another group of kids would find the school's joystick. Soon as we found them, we'd LOAD "*",8,1 and start playing. Summer games. GI JOE. Airwolf. We got so many kids staying after that teachers set up reserve sheets for the activity period and we would assign different games to the machines.
Sure, we were playing stolen games. Sure, we probably shouldn't have been doing it in school. But the enthusiasm we had for the computers continued into adulthood. One of our charter members runs a Windows CE contractor in Georgia.
I'm a big supporter of games and their ability to teach. You want to play UT? Well, it'll help you a lot if you first learn how to network some computers, and to know a little about hardware. Playing games encouraged me to learn how to program -- in fact, my first program ever was to make a couple animal sprites dance in a piece of software called "Logo."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Just a note to mention one of my fondest memories from junior high. One of our assistant principals sponsored a Dungeons & Dragons club after school. Just a handful of us RPG geeks would gather weekly to adventure and goof off for an hour or two. Great fun. (This was, of course, quite some time before the popularity of computer gaming really took off.)
:)
Others here have mentioned Warhammer, chess, go, etc. I'd love to see a local gaming club where the kids are encouraged to play any game.
Anyway, great thread. Now I've got the gaming itch and need to find some folks to roll the dice with.
~~Galen~~
This would never have passed at my high school. I meet a lot of objection from the principal when I tried to start a chess club, he said it was a game, and there was only room for "academics" at school. I did eventually get it started with help from the comp sci teacher, though.
Ain't that right.
When I was in High School (some 20 years ago) I did all the administrative programming. Not for pay, but because I felt as if I were contributing. Sometimes it's hard for those of us with below-average social skills to find a way to contribute in HS (why, I wasn't even nominated for prom king!)
The flip side is that all of the stuff I wrote had trojans in it. Not that I was malicious, it was just the typical teen-hacker mentality: the thrill of the break-in. Of course, they didn't do attendance or grades on the computer then.
There was a recent book that was released that discussed the decline in social capital. It discussed the decline in community bowling league, the lack of and continuing decline in church attendance. Over all, this generation, i.e. the generation X is becoming less tied to one another than any other previous generation. Clubs and leagues that was once known from the past generations is now almost gone to the way side.
:-) "Games, it's not just for boys anymore!!!"
However, having a computer club where kids can gather to share ides, play games, similar to those that spawn team work and fair play, in a control environment, it really is no different than the same values and ideas once shared by the chess club, weekly league bowling, or even the boy scouts. I believe it is a great way to build a sense of community, and provide a great way for individuals whom once may have felt a sense of outcast, now they may join others and come together for a sense of togetherness.
Bottom line, whatever game it may be, mech warrior, starcraft, sims, quake, or unreal, it is still the individual themselves that will make the right decision as to how to play the game. After all it is only a game until someone take it too far.
No one ever said you have to bet money in order to play a game of pool. The same could be said about the games such as Doom and Quake. It is only a game. And in a supervised environment, such as a computer club or a games club in a school and academic setting, perhaps the incident at columbine could have been avoided. For it was their sense of being outcasted from the rest of their peers that in the end drove them to that unfortunate fate. I believe had they been in an evironment where they could have felt a sense of belonging, things would have been different.
I say we should have all have a gaming club at each school!
One of the continuation schools in my old high school district would host lans every quarter as part of keeping kids off the streets/off drugs/outa jail budget. It was a great front. We could use their school computers or bring our own.
The principle limited us to games rated T or less, so we played Mech Warrior IV, Star Trek Elite Force, Revolt, and Tribes II.
its a great way to meet friends of similar interests.. lousy way to meet chicks. I wish more schools did this. Maybe those soon-to-be seniors could take up planning a lan as a senior project... donate the money raised to a local charity; perhaps one that aims to close the digital divide.
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
What's the situation on licensing? If each student brings his/her copy of a game to school and loads it on that PC is that legal? What if it's already installed on their home PC? It would be something imprtant to know. On that point, do Internet Cafes that run gaming sessions, purchase individual software packages for each of their PCs? I remember in the old days when my high school set up their first network with MS NT. Lots of after school sessions of Hearts :)