Random Thoughts

TeenTek now with custom Freeware Games

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They just keep blowing me away. I posted about this last week. About how this Freeware Flash game has taken over the Middle School. I gave my little game playing zombies a deadline. Saying I wanted to see the game on TeenTek by Friday night. Well, at 6:00 last night the game was posted. Here is what they had to say about it.

That’s right, TeenTek.com is bringing you games! Starting from now on we will be hosting game downloads for freeware games and even some of our own! First up:

 The N Game!

N Ninja 3D Representation 

The N Game is an AWESOME 2D platform flash game that Metanet Software has created. We’re hosting downloads for the latest version (1.4) at TeenTek.com, so just click on the links to get the game, cheat codes, and user levels! Our very own h4x has created his own N Game level. If you don’t have the game yet, download from the “N Ninja Complete Set” link. If you already have the N Game on your computer, you should download userlevels.txt from the “Userlevels” link and replace your old file with it, in order to play h4x’s level. (All the default user levels will stay. If you added any extra levels to the text file, copy them and paste them into the new file.)

OK, so I’m trying to follow these directions to give this game a go. I’ve seen some of the levels they created and there are some pretty cool looking ones. One level is actually the word TeenTek.

I had two teachers come to me this week to ask me if it was OK that the students were playing the game. Apparently the students where going to the after school homework help sessions and working on the game collaboratively there.

Also this week we got our Google Adsense working on the site. As of this post they’ve made $1.01. Every class period now they ask me how much they’ve made. What a great way to motivate students. Again, the goal was set at our first meeting to have enough money to fund our own pizza party.

We had a great discussion about the ads on Thursday. We were talking about clicking on our own ads or calling  your friends and telling them to click on them. It was an amazing discussion, we were talking ethics, and values without using the words. I watched as the conversation went on and as we started talking about how cool it would be to just have people click on the ads because they wanted to, and how do you do that? You write good stuff that makes people want to come to your site. Sure, we could probably get enough money if we told people to click, but what if we made enough money just because we had a really cool site? As the conversation turned to one of pride of ownership the talking quieted down and the production really started. It was the best day of class so far. kids running around figuring out the details of the game, three kids proof reading each others posts for errors. Two students discussing a movie trailer they were watching on YouTube. I sat in the corner and just watched, completely hands off as 22 6th,7th, and 8th graders completely self motivated worked on creating good solid content for their site.

Is there power in this social network? Without a doubt. Allowing students to be creators and contributers to society is what motivates them. We just have to give them the freedom and the guidance to do it.

[tags]teentek, games[/tags]

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I started blogging in 2005 and found it such a powerful way to reflect and share my thinking about technology, this generation, and how we prepare students for their future not our past.

2 Comments

  1. Hi Jeff
    Talking about Google adsense…I never really thought about it much until this week. One of my Grade 12 students showed me his Physics blog. This is where he stores all his notes from class. Over the past few weeks he has had a number of international hits and has been advertising it amongst students etc. He has made about $125 so far from adsense!. We also had a class discussion about the ethics of this feature. Apparently you are supposed to NOT click on the adds yourself [I’m sure Google has a way of finding you out ;-)] but the students thought it was a great joke to get each other to click on them. A great discussion ensued. I would say the novelty will wear off, or Google will put in place tougher restrictions. I agree it is a motivator to keep blogging and maintaining quality so that viewers come back. How many teachers have adds on their blogs? I have noticed a few but not many still….my blog is getting so crowded with all the interactive bits I am experimenting with I can’t see where there is room….

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