Classroom Games (Computer games)

Hello,

                Wintermute here bringing you your daily dose of Dumbr.  All week we have gone over types of games to play with your students, today we continue on with some computer games.  Your school may or may not have you playing games on the computer with the students, if so here are a few tips on how to make the class run smoother. And no, while they may be South Korean we will not be playing Starcraft, however humorous that would be. “You must construct additional pylons”, “how many additional pylons must teacher construct? Everybody count together!”

Tips:

1.       1. When I was a kid we played Oregon Trail together, generally there was a projector and the teacher did the clicking and we all chose what actions to take next. I found this actually works really well for starting off. If you were to place 20 kids in front of 20 computers they would most likely just get trigger happy and spam click everything until something positive happened. We want to make sure they are actually playing the game. Doing the game together as a class and having them raise their hands keeps them well involved.

2.       2.Eventually they can branch out into their own individual computers, when this happens you will have some kids that  are ready to compete in the GSL finals, and some kids who will stay stuck on the main menu screen all year long (poor Vincent).  So make sure you have a large repertoire of games at your disposal.

3.       3.Also make sure to have the computer room ready for your class to come in. Make sure to turn on every computer and get through all the loading screens prior to the start of class. The quickest way to a splitting headache is to shove 20 kids in a room and make them wait and stare at a windows XP loading screen.

4.       4.NEVER let it be known you are the tech savvy one at the school, because guess who they all turn to when something goes wrong. Mhmmm.

When I first started teaching computer class was my favorite. Basically it was a free hour for me to sit and drink coke while a bunch of kids damaged their eyes in a dark room.  However months later it became the worst class as it was such a huge hassle, every kid was on a different game, I ran out of things for them to play, and most had no idea what was going on in the games to begin with. I had to start all over from step one and just play through the games in class together. I wish I had known then what I know now, which is why you all get to learn from my mistakes.

I will be flying out soon, so I figure our next segment can be about your pre departure, flight, and we will discuss some of the first steps you should take after landing. These tips will be very very useful and you should not miss this. It is a very good segment full of information.

SCV good to go Sir,

Wintermute