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Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

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Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#21

Post by GrinningFool »

adriand wrote: post #5

This relates to something that has been bugging me lately, which is as a parent I have zero parental control over the devices that our school board issues to my children. My kids have iPhones and iPads, which are part of my Apple family account, and I can both monitor what they are doing and also set limits on screen time including hours of usage and for particular apps. However, I recently became aware that my son w…

We handle this by not allowing devices in our kid's room after lights-out. There's just no reason to have them there, and they represent a temptation that can be hard to resist at any age, nevermind school-age.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#22

Post by spiderice »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #18

My generation was writing games on school computers. Now they struggle to play them. Kids these days! Happy to consume content endlessly. It has to mean something. { Old man shakes his cane at young people. }

What percentage of your generation was actually writing games on school computers? 0.1%? If that. That number is definitely higher today, given that they have computer programming classes in schools now.

I get that you're trying to make a self aware joke about your comment with the old man shaking his cane. But this comment really is completely out of touch with reality.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#23

Post by soupfordummies »

timw4mail wrote: post #13

I kind of miss the days of school-sanctioned educational games, like those from MECC / The Learning Company. Of course the quality varied, but it made sense as a reward for finishing an assignment, where it could still be fun, but still be educational.

Playing Gizmos and Gadgets on the old IBMs token-ring'd together at school was where it all began for me and computers :)

EDIT: One teacher even had an Apple II with "Touch the Target"

Really makes me feel old thinking about it now-- it wasn't really THAT long ago but then again I guess it was.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#24

Post by _nalply »

wildzzz wrote: post #15
adriand wrote: post #5

This relates to something that has been bugging me lately, which is as a parent I have zero parental control over the devices that our school board issues to my children. My kids have iPhones and iPads, which are part of my Apple family account, and I can both monitor what they are doing and also set limits on screen time including hours of usage and for particular apps. However, I recently became aware that my son w…

Easy, no devices in their hands after bedtime. Your child isn't some busy tech professional that needs to be on call for work emails. They can live without having their iPad and iphone in their room. When I got caught as a kid playing my Gameboy when I should have been asleep, I lost my free access to it and could only use it when homework and chores were completed. Once play time was over, they took it back because…

Thank you. This confirms my suspicion: Just take the hardware away.

I am lucky that my children accept the limits I impose on them. I think because they are not stupid and they sense that they need limits. It's not a struggle to take the hardware away. I even apologize to them when it's time to let the laptop go.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#25

Post by HPsquared »

croutonwagon wrote: post #19
sharkweek wrote: post #7

As with many here I'm sure, during "computer lab" I was often done with assignments quite quickly all through school. The teachers rarely had any extra work to assign me so they pretty much gave me carte blanche to use my time however I wanted as long as it was on the computer. Great memories of trying to skirt school "blockers" in order to get to gaming websites in high school (this would have been in the early 00s)…

I once got suspended because I figured out how to bypass my schools lockdown policies on the computers in the lab and wouldnt tell them how i did it. (Hint: i learned they kept the "bypass" code in clear text in the registry, and later simply killed the processes from a command prompt with a batch file). I also had a small apache server and ftp box i would tunnel though or get executables from i wanted to play (like…

Did they ever notice anything amiss with the phone bill?

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#27

Post by giantg2 »

wildzzz wrote: post #15
adriand wrote: post #5

This relates to something that has been bugging me lately, which is as a parent I have zero parental control over the devices that our school board issues to my children. My kids have iPhones and iPads, which are part of my Apple family account, and I can both monitor what they are doing and also set limits on screen time including hours of usage and for particular apps. However, I recently became aware that my son w…

Easy, no devices in their hands after bedtime. Your child isn't some busy tech professional that needs to be on call for work emails. They can live without having their iPad and iphone in their room. When I got caught as a kid playing my Gameboy when I should have been asleep, I lost my free access to it and could only use it when homework and chores were completed. Once play time was over, they took it back because…

Same gameboy experience here

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#28

Post by giantg2 »

GrinningFool wrote: post #21
adriand wrote: post #5

This relates to something that has been bugging me lately, which is as a parent I have zero parental control over the devices that our school board issues to my children. My kids have iPhones and iPads, which are part of my Apple family account, and I can both monitor what they are doing and also set limits on screen time including hours of usage and for particular apps. However, I recently became aware that my son w…

We handle this by not allowing devices in our kid's room after lights-out. There's just no reason to have them there, and they represent a temptation that can be hard to resist at any age, nevermind school-age.

Better sleep hygiene as well

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#29

Post by evanmoran »

spiderice wrote: post #22
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #18

My generation was writing games on school computers. Now they struggle to play them. Kids these days! Happy to consume content endlessly. It has to mean something. { Old man shakes his cane at young people. }

What percentage of your generation was actually writing games on school computers? 0.1%? If that. That number is definitely higher today, given that they have computer programming classes in schools now. I get that you're trying to make a self aware joke about your comment with the old man shaking his cane. But this comment really is completely out of touch with reality.

I myself got into game programming by moding Quake and StarCraft. I’d guess a ton of people who ended up as programmers did this. So I think you’re right almost no students did anything with computers, but I’d say easily 50% of people who could code at all tried to make games and often school computers were all we had. Thankfully the computers had unbelievably bad security so it wasn’t super hard to get stuff going :)

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#30

Post by gainda »

When I was in the fifth grade we got a few G3's in our classroom. We were supposed to rotate small blocks of time throughout the week so we could have "research" time on them. I was the one who found CroMagnon Rally, Bugdom, & Nanosaur. They didn't let us use them much after that!
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