Multi-Generational Gaming

 One of the things I enjoy as a teacher is the ability to have some long stretches of time off. It helps to make up for all the extra time I have to put in at home when school is in. An activity I love doing is playing video games with my boys. They all have different things they like to play, so it gives some variety. 

Today as I was playing Fortnite with my 16 year old, I was thinking about how video games have evolved. As a kid, I was there when Pong came out. My dad was an early adopter of home video games. Well, at least when it came to Pong. He did love some good arcade time though. 

This afternoon we played duo no-build and duo arena modes. One of the things my son pointed out, we have gotten our game communication down pretty good. I saw that as a victory in itself. Being able to communicate with teenagers is already difficult at times. Speaking of victories, the best we did was a second place finish. Most of them were in the top 15 though. 

It has been an interesting video game journey thus far. Although I really miss the traditional arcade, gaming is still an activity that has carried forward with me. Seriously, I miss Street Fighter, Mortal Combat, Pac-Man, Galaga, Dragon’s Layer, Spy Hunter, and some good pinball. 

As I am writing this, I started thinking about how long this gaming connection goes between our generations. My dad started with Pong in the late 1970s and it has been with me in some form or other since then. As kids, we never had consoles at home, but our friends did. My dad thought it was better money to spend it on a home pc. We did find ourselves playing games on the computer. That of course led to the great deal of PC gaming I did and my love of Real-Time Strategy games. 

Calculating the math on how long this has been going on, figures out to be 43 years. I find it amazing that an activity many passed off as something that would eventually die, has connected us across our generations. 

Do you have an activity that has crossed multiple generations? Feel free to share.

New Year and a New Reason to Blog

 Welcome to 2023 Everyone!

It has been a total rollercoaster of life since I last published something here. As a writer and a teacher, I realize that I can improve my craft in both fields by writing something every day. I thought about doing this just on my laptop or even handwriting it, but why should I hide it when I can share it with the world. That gave me a good reason to fire this blog back up!

I really can't say what you will find here or if anyone will even visit. It really doesn't matter. If my random writings only improve the skills I already have, develop some new ones, and provide me a creative outlet, so be it. The one goal that I have is to write 300 words per day. 

I recently read in a blog post at AWAI about looking back on all your accomplishments, skills learned, and challenges successfully completed. This was as an application across your entire life. I feel that is a very good starting point for this year for me. The post used it as a technique to get over the feeling and voices that say you are not very good at something. This activity ties in really well with the effort I am making with my students to develop a growth mindset. 

A resource I have used for teaching this in class is the Big Ideas section of the ClassDojo website. The little animated videos are great for engaging the students and having a structured discussion about the concept. I think a good challenge would be tying the two together on a level my students can accomplish as a New Year’s exercise.

Feel free to share any ideas you may have that would help me structure this for a bunch of 9 year olds. My students are great creative writers. I just need to flip that strength into writing something autobiographical.