As with many ’90s and ’00s kids, I have fond memories of pulling up addictinggames.com (which is still around!) on the school computer between classes and during study hall — until the staff figured out how to block it. That video game tug-of-war between intrepid students and disgruntled teachers has continued unabated, and now my own first grader is learning the tricks of the trade. This surprisingly congenial article details the new generation of game developers, teachers, and students now engaged in that same struggle.
Kids have been trying to play video games on school computers for as long as computers have cropped up in schools, but decades ago, they jumped through those hoops in a dedicated computer lab, or secretly downloaded homemade games to their TI-83 calculators while pretending to crunch equations. But these days, computers are deeply intertwined into education, and many school age children have regular access to a computer, usually a Chromebook or iPad, as early as 1st grade, when kids are only six or seven years old.
What exists now is an escalating game of whack-a-mole between students, teachers, and IT departments, as kids hopeful to do anything but school work try to find a way to play games.
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