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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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BYOD is partially a terrible idea. They shouldn't be sending kids home with devices. What about parents who object to technology screen time? Could we not invent a religion, say Reformed Mennonites, that objects to children using screen devices? How could they argue with that?

I was able to use unspecific religious and cultural preferences to get my school to allow BYOD, after many other attempts failed. I think there’s some value in having a modern, atheist, philosophical church to yield positive bureaucratic results. It reminds me of the early internet’s Church of the Subgenius [0] and people playing around for lulz. I had friends who were ironically Satanists and still have some who cla…

Real US church with a long history, prominent historic members (John Adams and family) and a rather open attitude towards the existence of God/gods: the Unitarian-Universalist Church. My agnostic childhood best friend sends her daughters to various youth programs there, and she and I are both recovering Southern Baptists (I went a more middle road: Episcopalian). She really likes their relationship and sexuality education series for teens.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's not ADHD, a professional, and at least tell you that, and then provide coping strategies to help focus. And honestly it doesn't hurt for a teen to have someone who they can talk to who is not their parent/authority figure, and has their shit together.

Yes, this is true. Professional help is useful to teens (and all humans). While true, it’s silly to suggest it in response to a problem occurring due to school laptops. It’s like reminding people that meditation and exercise are valuable. It’s like when I’m menstruating and someone says “honestly it doesn’t hurt for a teen to have someone who they can talk to who is not their parent/authority figure.” Definitely true…

Lack of focus and all that isn't new. It doesn't need a laptop to trigger it. Teens have always been like that. We've just started applying names to the problem instead of a belt.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#173
I work on games that are played on school Chromebooks and are om crazy games.

Honestly I think it's a bit sad that schools are so dependent on Chromebooks. I didn't have a Chromebook at school when I went. I think I'd learn worse on a Chromebook than a teacher.

We installed the halo free trial on our school computers and played blood gulch CTF in the computer lab all the time. It was awesome.

Miniclip was huge on these Sun Microsystems machines we had.

Good times.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#174
post #110

Trying to get through hardware/software locks, content filters, firewalls, spyware etc. at school is usually the first experience kids have with "hacker" culture. For a lot of them (myself included) this eventually leads up to a real career in the tech industry. So godspeed, all you young rebels.

I would be more sympathetic to this line of thinking if I didn't have a 16yo who's going to be lucky to get through high school because he can't focus in class. I would have been the same at his age, if someone had plopped an internet connected device on my desk and told me to focus on school work.

At this age boys go through a profound neurological change.

Check out “The Male Brain”

I’ve advised a lot of parents at this stage, the prescription is always the same:

Let go of extrinsic motivation (their brains are severely muted against it)

Focus on cultivating empty time & space to find intrinsic motivation

As a dad myself, even with this knowledge, it was scary to take off expectations and let my boys flounder

But for both of them, as well as for the many other young men whose parents went this path, their son found their “thing”

Once that took hold, achievement became their obsession

We cannot expect boys to pursue excellence out of pleasing others or meeting some societal bar. It’s not sustainable, healthy, or effective.

They need to experience the existential terror of “what am I going to do with my life?” without guardrails

There are some boys who do excel at whatever their parents tell them to do, but that just delays this process to their 20s - meaning that all the investment made in college usually has minimal impact on what they actually end up doing.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#175
Our thing in high school was Sauerbraten one-shot-one-kill. The teacher didn't care as long as all the assignments got done. I would throw up an FTP server, everybody would download the client, and then we'd pass around the current IP and go ham. It was probably the most file management and "real" computer usage a lot of those kids ever did.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#176
I always just befriended the teachers and computer lab supervisors by getting the work done first and then asking to play for the remaining time in the period. Even the more strict teachers always made a deal of some sort.

I’d share flash drives loaded with halo combat evolved trial, Warcraft III, and a plethora of MAME games and that incentivized other students who wanted to play with me.

It could be a learning tool if expectations are set right. But yeah it did lead to some kids trying to just play games all period too and would have to later fail the class and do summer packets. But it sure did lead to results for the majority.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#177
post #110

Trying to get through hardware/software locks, content filters, firewalls, spyware etc. at school is usually the first experience kids have with "hacker" culture. For a lot of them (myself included) this eventually leads up to a real career in the tech industry. So godspeed, all you young rebels.

I got started my journey into CS by getting a Minecraft server up and running on my school laptop. Adding mods, figuring out networking, how to back the server up, it got me excited and hooked on working with tech!

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#178
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you know this, but trouble focusing could stem from many issues, the vast majority of which can be treated. ADHD is a big one, but there's others too, some behavioural. If you haven't already seen one, I'd book an appointment with a psychiatrist and/or a psychologist. I wish my parents had done so when I was the student with trouble focusing so I could have received the help I desperately needed but never go…

Welcome to America where everyone suddently has ADHD that needs to be treated with drugs...

Also, welcome to America where a large segment of the population dismisses ADHD entirely, and presumes that everyone has the same ability to focus on uninteresting tasks, or presumes that those who suffer from ADHD and have hyperfocuses are lying because "you can focus on this, why not that?"

There is a middle ground, a concept that is so utterly lacking in the modern world.

ADHD is real. Unfortunately, there's no direct physiological test for it, it has to be observed via behavioral analysis, thus it's possible to get wrong. It's also not properly accepted as the disability that it can be without support and treatment. If a person has it, and is not properly treated at a young age, then that person is likely to have low chances in being able to get treatment as an adult. At that point, it basically relies on the individual being able to find a doctor who doesn't dismiss their concerns (because people are human and make mistakes, or have incorrect understandings).

ADHD medications are also very highly regulated, far more than opioids and other far more dangerous-when-abused medications. If an ADHD person is prevented from obtaining their medication due to factors out of their control, they risk major setbacks in all areas of their life that can be extremely hard to bounce back from without some type of external support.

Increased numbers of ADHD diagnoses does not necessarily indicate over-diagnosis. Of course the numbers of diagnoses will increase, how could there ever be a diagnosis before ADHD was identified and labeled? In the early 20th century, it was called "brain-injured child syndrome" and later "minimal brain damage". Those words also would have an associated meaning in the public eye, and people have historically not been good at dealing with things like "brain damage" and "abnormal people", so things like that tend to come with the baggage of stigma, further reducing chances of success and happiness in life.

I was diagnosed with ADD in the late 80s, when I was 7 or 8. Just on a personal, observational level, I can tell that I definitely have focus control issues in the classical ADHD way - things that don't interest my mind are nearly impossible to focus on, but things that tickle my mind's itch are extremely easy to focus on. There's also not control over which group any given thing falls into. I'm extremely sensitive to physical stimulation, unless something else overrides that on a physical level (like the aforementioned hyperfocus). Stimulants slow me down, rather than speeding me up (this is probably a good test for likelihood of ADHD). For certain things, my brain figures things out extremely fast (one of these days I might try to go on Wheel of Fortune lol). This is just "the way life is" for me, always has been since I can remember.

I would honestly like to see more research into how psychedelics interplay with ADHD. A few years back, I had a particularly deep experience with DMT that revolutionized how I think about time and human perception. It also fundamentally changed my focus control abilities for at least a good three months. At the risk of introducing a bit of "woo", it almost felt like the universe fed me a massive data-dump, that even to this day comes out in the form of my gut feeling. I've also had improved peripheral vision since this experience. I've also had similar, shorter lasting effects from LSD and mushrooms. I think there is a woefully untapped resource in psychedelics, that would be very useful for ADHD individuals. I think even a mindful, rigid microdosing regimen would be extremely helpful, with less of the side effects that stimulant-based drugs have. I believe this to be due to stimulant-like properties of the classical psychedelics.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#180
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

I posted in one of those threads, but I'm a parent that had to meet the school principal because my 4th grader "broke the school tablets to install games on them" when the actual "issue" was that he'd figured out that no WiFi == dino time!
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