[Year 12 IPM] OT : LAN gaming

Mon Feb 27 20:06:46 EST 2006

Hi Andrew,

The school I attended allowed students in the notebook class to use the
school's network for gaming during lunch (and occasionally, with lenient
teachers, during class!) We were responsible for the licensing on our own
machines (which meant that many of the games were illegal copies). This was
back in 1999, though, and I imagine schools in general have tightened down
their ICT policies since then. 

Ignoring the moral questions re: parental permission, encouraging violence,
etc., here are my thoughts on a couple of technical aspects:

- Depending on whether students are using their own notebooks or the school
computers, modern games like Counter-Strike are probably going to strain
most systems, especially school computers which generally don't have much in
the way of processing / graphics rendering power.

- Licenses will be an issue if using the school's computers (or if you want
to ensure that all of your students are using legal software), as games
generally cost around $90 and as far as I know site licenses for games are
not available (although some game publishers may offer it to permanent LAN
gaming places).

To be honest, it's quite hard finding fun multiplayer games that don't
involve a degree of violence (I know, terrible). Car racing games may fit
into this category, but are generally not all that popular. (Incidentally,
if anyone's looking for a great, completely non-violent game, Sim City 4 is
a brilliantly addictive example.) I would consider looking into the Age of
Empires series of games. They are Real-Time Strategy games (not the typical
first-person shoot 'em up generally associated with gaming), and while they
do involve a degree of violence (the objective is usually to destroy your
opponents' bases), it is far less graphic or direct as, say, Counter-Strike.
The third instalment in the series has just been released, but the first two
titles, as well as being great fun, will run on a fairly low-end machine.
They'll also be relatively cheap (should be able to pick up a copy for
around $10-$20) and could tenuously labelled "educational" - they are based
on historical warring civilisations and technology.

Hope that this helps somewhat!

Cheers

Gavin Ballard
Assistant Officer
VITTA
http://www.vitta.org.au
gavin at vitta.org.au

-----Original Message-----
From: ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au] On
Behalf Of WEIR Andrew
Sent: Monday, 27 February 2006 7:15 PM
To: Year 12 Information Technology Processing and Management Teachers'
Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Year 12 IPM] OT : LAN gaming

Andrew
Thanks for that we have started to investigate games without a violence
aspect straight after i sent the email the students involved understand the
issues with perception of violence.

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Andrew Shortell
Sent: Mon 2/27/2006 3:32 PM
To: Year 12 Information Technology Processing and Management
Teachers'MailingList
Subject: RE: [Year 12 IPM] OT : LAN gaming

Andrew,
Counter strike is a game that encourages a lot of noise from the
participants. (I really mean a lot.)  The game server needs its firewall
disabled. The game runs quicker on a dedicated machine. 

Questions I would ask include:
Parental permission ?
Encouraging violence?
Against the ethos of TC College - religious affiliation etc, biblically
inclined parents etc
Bad reaction from RE teachers?

The fact that it will be almost entirely boys .. this is not a girl
friendly environment ... 

I endured it on Wednesday afternoons last year --- some loved it, some
grew bored

LAN gaming is big, there must be better ones out there than CS
Good luck

Andrew Shortell
Braemar College 

-----Original Message-----
From: ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:ipm-bounces at edulists.com.au]
On Behalf Of WEIR Andrew
Sent: Monday, 27 February 2006 3:07 PM
To: Year 12 Information Technology Processing and Management
Teachers'MailingList
Subject: [Year 12 IPM] OT : LAN gaming

Apologies for the off topic question

Some of my students have expressed interest in wanting to run a lunch
time LAN party using the schools network before we rule it out or go
ahead with it I wanted to see if any other schools had actually done it
and what issues we might face.

We have already begun to look at the following aspects;
Game Rating and audience.
Licenses
Installation

The students wanted to use Counter strike. There idea is charge a small
admission fee and donate the money to charity.

Any help or advice would be great.
Andrew

Andrew Weir
Head Of Information Technology
VK3HFT
Thomas Carr College
35 Thomas Carr College Tarneit

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http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe
IPM Mailing List kindly supported by
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and
http://www.vitta.org.au  - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers
Association Inc

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