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KSP at work

Ryn

By Ryn
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RedRockets

RedRockets

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At my job KSP has become a sort of cult phenomenon and no one ever gets in trouble for excessively playing it on the clock...Let me explain.

I have started a KSP club at the HS i teach at.

It all began by me playing the game about 2 1/2 months ago in class and accidently leaving the projector on.

The kids were mesmerized just watching me launch, crash, and burn... even without sound... during their advisory period (study hall) and I didn\'t even notice until one of them spoke up and asked, 'What is this, Mr?.'

I showed them what KSP was all about: The freedom to design your own parts, play at your own pace, and learn by trial and error.

The first student came up about 2 weeks after that and asked if he could get a copy of the game I obliged and before I knew it there was a cult following at my school.

Since then it has blossomed into a full fledged club (based out of Science Club, and Electronics Club) with about fifteen highly active members and more than 75 students who play with the game but don\'t tend to stay after school.

Its a great teaching tool for physics and science in general so although I am a Social Studies teacher the Science teachers are all over me to give tutorials on design and ship controls to their physics classes this is how I can get away with playing at work. The science teachers have been using it as a lab for their units on motion and (very) basic orbital physics.

For me the strangest part is to to see such unlikely students take up the game, you would be surprised to see the thugish gangsters, popular girls, and spaciest stoners coming in with a flash drive and asking to get a copy of the latest edition from me (most of these kids don\'t have computers or even internet at home).

Its become a real solid part of my teaching style/philosophy.

I believe that the best way to learn is to watch and play. (You don\'t see killer whales taking classes on catching seals, they just learn by watching then playing and learning isn\'t forced but simply acquired.)

The do it yourself nature of the game at this stage in its development is also a contributing factor in its popularity among the kids at my school. The students are quickly becoming the masters, learning faster than i can teach them about using an operating system, files, bugs, ect...

I truly love this game

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RedRockets

RedRockets

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Best to just use the school network and share the joy and science education of KSP with everyone.

Hey, if you guys can bring your own computers to school, but there is a firewall, check out tor: https://www.torproject.org/

I am sure that sounds like a good idea Trbinsc but for us teachers out there surpassing the security measures of the schools network is a fast way to get fired from a public school then you are a pariah and will never get hired again.

But as far as private bussiness goes I wouldn\'t really know.

Just a little info from a teacher who is looking forward to the pension in the golden years.

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GroundHOG2010

GroundHOG2010

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I feel sorry for everyone. I ended up in a school where only websites like pornography websites and minecraft.net are banned. Even then a few of us use TOR to study (they won\'t block flash gaming sites but they will block Luft46???).

Oh well. Back to playing skyrim at school.

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shadowfax

shadowfax

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Since then it has blossomed into a full fledged club (based out of Science Club, and Electronics Club) with about fifteen highly active members and more than 75 students who play with the game but don\'t tend to stay after school.

This brings up something that HarvesteR and the gang are probably going to want to think about before the first commercial release - educational licenses for computer labs. It\'s been awhile since I was in high school, and I was there during an era when computers, space, etc were decidedly uncool, but I can think of a lot of kids who would have been all over a KSP club. That should be even moreso the case today, now that kids no longer get stuffed in lockers for using computers. ;)

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Bobsama

Bobsama

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Wait.... you can play it on an ipad?

Perhaps using remote login?

Anyways, I\'m lucky not to have any controls like that. I hated that back when I was in school. Aaah the good days were when Google Translate was a legitimate way to bypass their security. Alternatives included port-hopping and forcing a fixed IP. I got around their bans for a while via playing text-based games. Very few people now think text-based games could be fun or entertaining.

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