Teaching 12 year old kids
I've started teaching a small group of 4th and 5th graders (age 10 and 11) about text based games. We are meeting in an after school program. I wrote my first introduction about this project here and cross-posted it to to a couple of community listserves.
Yesterday was our first class, and I admit, I was nervous. How would a 11 year old kid respond to a text-based game in 2008? My anxiety increased as one of the kids asked me if we were going to design video games. I told him no, we might design text-based games if we have time. I started with an introduction "you are about to play one of the very first computer games" (ok, a bit of a stretch, but it's kind of close). Enticed, they started typing
On the screen, a blue screen with the words "You are standing West of a white house...."
I wrote the cardinal directions on a whiteboard, as well as some commands they might need (look, i, open, close, etc..). Then they began. There was some initial playing with the parser:
kid -> "you are stupid"
Zork -> "I don't know the word "you"
kid -> "what am I supposed to do?"
I teased them a bit. "Make sure you examine everything, and if you find a weapon, I strongly suggest you get it...never know when you're going to run into a troll who wants to eat you...."
The kids looked at me in disbelief. Troll? Weapons? Combat? WHERE?! They became glued to their screens and excitedly started pointing and yelling.
I was almost brought to tears (literally) when a young voiced piped up "Um, Mr. MacKenty, What's a Grue?". I immediately halted the class and we reviewed the wikipedia entry about grues. I carefully explained that grues are sort of like rattlesnakes, in that they like to be left alone - but if they are annoyed, they might eat you. I told them if they want to avoid being eaten, it's best to have some light available. Immediately they started asking each other about the brass lantern in the old white house.
It was about 35 minutes into the class I realized how utterly and completely captivated the kids were. I mean, they were literally glued to the screens; in a state of flow - they were consulting invisclues, they had printed maps, and they were trying to write a guide to solve the game quickly. It was a wonderful experience.
They didn't solve zork, we ran out of time. But they did download the interpreter and the z machine files to usb drives so they could play it at home.
We'll continue with Zork I next week, and I hope to introduce MUD's the week after.
This is why I love teaching.
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That sounded like a great
That sounded like a great experience. :D
I always envisioned Grues as some sort of Dust Puppies, without the feet. Black and fluffy. ;)
Mudding at 12 years
What you are doing sounds fascinating.
Sadly the Text Muds are steadily losing players to the more flashy graphic games, but to me, and many other avid Mudders the text games will always be superior, because of their depth and variety and - above all - the sense of community that you can find in them. Maybe you are helping a bit there, by introducing a new generation to the magic world of Text Muds.
By now you have probably already got a lot of offers from various Muds, but I'm going to suggest my own anyhow.
I'm the Head Builder of a rather old Mud, 4 Dimensions, which has been on line for over 10 years by now. We have players that have been with us for most of that time, and at least two of our long-timers started at the age of 12. We have players from east European countries, whose English was so bad when they first started to play here that they seemed almost illiterate, but whose language skills have developed so much that they are now building zones for us. We also have several happily married couples that first met on our Mud, but that's yet another story.
There are several reasons why I think 4D would suit your needs:
1. Our theme is Time Travel, which means that we not only have one world to explore, we've got 4 different themes of which you can take your pick; PreHistoric (or rather Antique), Medieval, Old West and Future, each of them true to the chosen time period.
2. Although our virtual world is vast, and we have lots of unusual features, our playerbase has always been pretty small. In this case that would be a good thing, because it makes for a close-knit community, not the rather unpersonal feel that you get in the larger Muds with hundreds of players on line.
Your pupils will never be totally 'safe' in any Mud, since the games by definition are violent and competitive, but I could guarantee you reasonably safety, and hopefully an interesting time. If you're looking for puzzles, that's our specialty, and we even have a special 'Quest Academy', to introduce new players to the secrets of our zones.
Our codebase, Circle, also has one of the most easily comprehensible on-line building tools, and I'd be quite happy to demonstrate it to you and to answer any questions about Mud design that you might have.
If you are interested, you can contact me over email, molly.4d@swipnet.se, to possibly set up a meeting on line. But first maybe you should have a look at our website, at http://4dimensions.org/, where among other things you'll find descriptions of all our zones, and a list of Questcards, with short introductions to the various Quests and puzzles that we offer our players.
Molly O'Hara of 4 Dimensions
Go circle go
May I say how cool it is, Molly, to have a Circle admin reading c.p.o? :)
Well he did post the link to
Well he did post the link to here on a Mud-related board, I didn't find it by myself, hehe.
I am quite intrigued by the project however, which is why I responded.
I always thought that Text Muds have a potential in school education - you could for instance use them to teach history, geography or biology in a fun way. If only the schools were more interested, the possibility is there.