LaurenandLloyd.com

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games

Typical Day

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Lauren told me that I get to write today’s post. It’s never a comfortable thing when she says that, because I always wonder if I’m forgetting something. Is today Lauren’s birthday? Is it our anniversary? Is it some other day that, while not technically our official anniversary, is the anniversary of something that I should remember anyway? Did she recently do something really nice for me that I should have taken pictures of and be ready to tell the world? Probably yes to one or more of the above, but I’m not sure which one.

Instead, let me tell you how I spent MLK Day 2016. I like to think that I celebrated it in typical fashion. I started off by sleeping in, because we didn’t have school. I found out later that Seward Public, St. John and –and here I’m just guessing– Concordia all have school, so I was basically the only person in Seward with the day off.

Next I read a little bit. I’m still embarrassed to write that I’ve been reading some fan fiction. If you’re a passingly familiar with Harry Potter –and by this point I think that probably includes just about everyone– and if you’re familiar with Role-Playing games –and by Role-Playing games I mean the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons– then there’s a good chance that you’ll feel like Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is a complete travesty and makes both of those things you like worse. I myself am not a Harry Potter fan, and haven’t played Dungeons and Dragons for something like 20 years, so it all worked out for me. Your millage may vary.

After that I played Railroad Tycoon II, which is a video game for about 1995 where you, you know, build a railroad. I get a surprisingly large amount of entertainment value out of laying out some track between cities and hauling passengers and cargo around. I don’t actually have the manual for the game. So, while I think I’m doing well and things are coming along nicely with my railroad empire, eventually the game ends and the computer starts trash talking me about how poor a job I did. You don’t know, computer. I did just fine.

Eventually I had to do things like talk to the electrician who was adding another circuit to the room at school where the servers are, so we wouldn’t embarrassingly come to a screeching halt during the school day when we plug in 9 computers and 18 monitors in the Tech Center. I also did a little cleaning and made supper, but I do not consider those to be part of me MLK day celebration.

 

Now with kittens

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We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday with my folks in Missouri. It was a successful visit. At the height there were 2 parents, 3 siblings, nieces and nephews (1 each), 1 grand nephew (is that a thing?),  3 spouses, 1 girl friend, 3 kittens, 1 cat, 1 dog and 1 puppy. There was no appearance by the Christmas Chicken this year.

Christina and I both brought Settlers of Catan: Roads to Rails for the gift exchange. This turned out to be the right number, because we had 8 people who wanted to play.

catan

We also learned how to play Munchkin and taught Declan and Paul how to play Magic the Gathering, because they were not big enough geeks already.

Also, kittens were pushed around.

 

Bioshock Infinite

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So, I finished Bioshock Infinite this week. That’s a video game if you didn’t know. This is Lloyd if you didn’t know.

It was a good game. It was fairly short as far as video games go and altogether well done. I purchased it a few months ago when it was on sale for $9.99 and my students who have played it have been pestering me to play it so that we could talk about it.

The game is set in 1912 and the music for it is just great. There are phonographs that you walk by that play songs from the turn of the century as you walk by them, loud speakers in public squares that have period music playing. Even a barbershop quartet tucked away in a little corner.

But as you get further into the game, some of the music changes. Here are a few samples:

It actually works really well with the story line of the game too. Here’s the final song at the end of the game:

Trying to find some loot

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Dear ******,

It was nice to speak with you during last week’s Tech Crawl. I was the teacher working on gamifying his high school programming class. I was also the guy who handed out the flyer full of typos. How embarrassing.

My students are starting to get into the spirit of gamification and it’s interesting to see that there’s not just one thing that’s motivating them. Some of them are interested in being near the top of the leaderboards. Some of them are interested in leveling up and getting to pick perks from the “perk tree.” Some of them are interested in the idea of getting loot when they level up, and some of them just seem to like the idea that programming class is going to be different from the rest of their day.

As you might recall, my mission was to find Nebraska tech companies who were interested in promoting the creation of more home grown Nebraska programmers. At the university level they are telling us that they don’t have as many students applying to the Computer Science program. My goal is to encourage high school programming students to excel at programming by gamifying our programming class.

One part of this gamification process is to provide loot to students as they “Level Up.” Would ****** like to provide some loot? Loot could take many forms. Here are some ideas that occurred to me, but I’m more interested in ideas that you have:

  1. Any sort of swag (um, I mean promotional materials): t-shirts, hats, mugs, flashlights,  usb drives… it doesn’t really matter. High schoolers like to get things.
  2. Stuff you have lying around. What do you do with your old (but still reasonable) computer equipment? We’re a 501c and we’d be happy to give you a donation receipt. (This actually applies to the rest of these ideas as well.)
  3. If you want to provide some non-swag things, gift cards are nice. Fast food, iTunes, anything really. Tickets to a game or show?  They are kids who were geeky enough to pick a programming class, so anything technology related would be good and fit the theme.
  4. Something less tangible maybe?  A personal tour of ****** and lunch with the boss? The chance at a summer intern position for someone who reaches the highest level? You wouldn’t want to offer that to everyone who reaches level 5, but we can talk about that.

Again, just some ideas. I’m open to anything.

How much do we need? I have 20 students (that’s 10% of our student body), so if there is something you want every student to have we would need 20 of it, and we would offer it as loot at a relatively low level. Anything in smaller quantities -and smaller quantities are fine- we would offer at higher levels. I would be happy to pick things up if that makes it easier on your end.

Thanks for anything you care to do to help encourage students to excel at programming, and if you have any questions or suggestions, I would love to hear them.

If you want to check up on our class, you can find us at: http://programming.lincolnlutheran.org

At this point there are new leaderboards, achievement, perks and so on being added every week. There’s also a blog if you’re interested in how things are turning out.

You actually have two of my former programming students working for you now: Derek Guenther and Rees Klintworth.

Lloyd Sommerer
teacher/technology coordinator
Lincoln Lutheran High School

15 hours of fun

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There are two seniors at Lincoln Lutheran who don’t have a class 4th period and they typically hang out with me in the Mac Lab. They are both into war games and I showed them a website where they could buy games for cheap(er). This procured for me an invitation to my first game of Axis & Allies 1940 global:

That was the first 8 hours. We started at 8:00, ordered pizza for lunch (thanks Pizza Hut any pizza for $10 deal) and played until about 4:00. I thought for sure we would finish it up the second day. We started at 3:30 and called it quits at 8:00. There was no dinner and I don’t think any of us noticed. We started up again at 8:30 the next morning and finally finished early in the afternoon. I would have been all for calling it quits much sooner, but the kids were like, still really excited.

When it was all over one of them said, “It was so cool actually finishing a game. I can’t believe that you didn’t quit when it was obvious you were going to lose.” That’s just how I roll.

Handbell Hero

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You may be familiar with the guitar video game ‘Guitar Hero’ – star of Middle School Fun Night. Well, here’s hoping that Brad the Handbell Director doesn’t steal today’s post! If your computer has the speed, and you have the need, you have to play….

Handbell Hero.

Play the bells, play them well! Do it right, and the players delight. Do it badly, they frown sadly. Ding dong, don’t get it wrong. Enough already – click the picture.

Play me!