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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

#71

Post by abrookewood »

1letterunixname wrote: post #62
dlevine wrote: post #58

I've been teaching my nephew how to code using Scratch. He told me that they blocked Scratch at school because some of the kids were using it to play games during school. Kind of a shame, because it is a great way for kids to learn how to code.

"The culture of no" demands obedience and forbids anything remotely fun. Lazy pencil pushers kill kids' curiosity before it begins, footgunning their entire purpose for being.

C'mon ... the reality is that teachers need the kids to concentrate and given a choice between doing work and playing games, the games are likely to win. Teachers are being put in an impossible situation.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#72

Post by abrookewood »

dlevine wrote: post #58

I've been teaching my nephew how to code using Scratch. He told me that they blocked Scratch at school because some of the kids were using it to play games during school. Kind of a shame, because it is a great way for kids to learn how to code.

Scratch is great - such an excellent introduction to coding.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#73

Post by prmoustache »

digitallyfree wrote: post #42

> “One kid kept opening up game sites” said one high school teacher who asked to stay anonymous, to protect the identities of their students. “I would wait for them to open one, add it to my list of blocked websites, refresh my settings, and then they would get locked out of it. Then they would open a new tab, find a new game site, and the cycle would repeat. This happened over and over over the course of about half…

what I don't understand is why they are working with a blacklist and not whitelist?

Sure kids would find ways to do something else or play the same way they use collaborative editing to chat but I don't even understand the purpose of letting them browse the whole internet during a class.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#74

Post by Dalewyn »

marssaxman wrote: post #46
wildzzz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Easy, no devices in their hands after bedtime. This is no longer so easy after your kid realizes they can simply wait until you fall asleep, then sneak into your room and filch the machine from wherever you've stashed it.

Assuming the parents are competent, that only happens once.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#75

Post by gnicholas »

A school IT specialist told me about a clever student hack. Their school blocks all sorts of traffic, but teachers can allow exceptions via a password.

One student installed a keylogger onto his BYOD laptop (many schools allow kids to bring their own, or use a mediocre school-provided device), and then made up a plausible excuse to hit the firewall (e.g., doing a report on anatomy, but innocuous site was blocked because the word "breast" appears).

Then the student presents the laptop to the teacher, who types in the exception password. Since the keylogger is running, the student can now grant himself exceptions to his heart's content.

The school eventually figured this out. It's not clear how they avoid the situation however; do you tell teachers never to grant exceptions on student-owned devices?

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#76

Post by abrookewood »

dusted wrote: post #69

Back in my day, we had a room filled with 386 and 486 machines running windows 3.11, we'd bring floppies from home and boot them to dos to play, it was great and teachers encouraged it. I guess things have changed.. For one.. Kids no longer get to experience the joy of "going to the computer room".. Or later, the thrills of networked delta-force matches during lunch at the library.

No, now they have more computer power than that entire room sitting in their pocket. Very different times.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#78

Post by hanselot »

abrookewood wrote: post #71
1letterunixname wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The culture of no" demands obedience and forbids anything remotely fun. Lazy pencil pushers kill kids' curiosity before it begins, footgunning their entire purpose for being.

C'mon ... the reality is that teachers need the kids to concentrate and given a choice between doing work and playing games, the games are likely to win. Teachers are being put in an impossible situation.

I have quite a number of fond memories of how we hid pokemon blue and gameboy emulators on every machine in our school's computer lab (from around 1999-2003).

We were also the kids who were the most into computers at the time, and eventually the teacher realised that if they were on our side, they could use us to help teach the other kids basic computer skills (office, etc), by using games as the incentive.

If you can't beat them, have them join you...

Edit: We have reached max depth it seems, so I will just update stating that I suppose the change in the scene is quite drastic. Back when I was in school, maybe 5% of the class were computer literate. I felt like a god in that place, being able to help the "smart" students do basic things like creating an email address.

The fact that the teacher doesn't see this as an opportunity is what surprises me. If the work is so boring that kids would rather play games, then use gamification to exploit this behaviour.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#79

Post by bandyaboot »

1letterunixname wrote: post #62
dlevine wrote: post #58

I've been teaching my nephew how to code using Scratch. He told me that they blocked Scratch at school because some of the kids were using it to play games during school. Kind of a shame, because it is a great way for kids to learn how to code.

"The culture of no" demands obedience and forbids anything remotely fun. Lazy pencil pushers kill kids' curiosity before it begins, footgunning their entire purpose for being.

Well kids don’t tend to be great at thinking about long term consequences or moderating their time spent having fun, so how would you have the lazy pencil pushers handle the problem of kids being distracted by games at school?

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#80

Post by sneak »

rzzzt wrote: post #77

I chuckled when reading about the "turn WiFi off so that the Chrome dino appears" method: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34123025 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119141

There is a Google device management setting that disables the dino game.

Imagine working/studying at a place that mandates that setting.

Imagine working at Google and being asked by your product manager to implement that.

Imagine actually doing it instead of just quitting.

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