Video games are what most people use to escape from reality after a long day.
But for many students at De Pere High School, they use video games to escape from the moment. To escape from the long and boring lecture. To escape from the stress of the school day.
But how?
Students can’t play on their phones anymore. And they can’t bring their new-gen consoles from home to play in the middle of class. So how could they be playing video games in class?
It’s simple.
They use the very thing you’re most likely reading this on: the student Chromebook.
During my time here at the De Pere School District, I noticed that many students, throughout Foxview, the Middle School, and the High School, have played some sort of game in class.
It becomes a major problem when teachers are trying to teach, and all of their students are playing games, not paying attention. So the teachers take action by putting in a request to I.T. block the websites where they play games.
But should every single game website be blocked?
Some of the game websites students use are Gimkit/Blooket/Kahoot.
Students use these websites to play trivia games with different game modes. The reason they haven’t been blocked yet is that teachers use it a lot to host games within their classes.
Another website students use is Scratch.
Scratch is a coding website where users can share their projects in the Explore tab. So students can go on to the explore tab and play some of these games that other people have made.
In fact, because of this, Scratch was blocked for a few days before having this change reversed due to Scratch being involved in Mrs. Deleeuw’s and Mrs. Wright’s Digital Literacy courses at Foxview and the Middle school, respectively.
And the last website that students use is the Google Sites Unblocked, which allows them to play any mobile game they can think of, and many PC games. Most teachers block these as soon as they see them.
“If you have all of that done and you’re in that place and you’re confident that you’re in a good place,” Rhonda Fisher, a teacher at De Pere High School, said, “I’m gonna back off.” Meaning, if a student is doing well in the class and they’re in a good place, that’s one of the times and places students should be fine if they wish to play games in class.
It only becomes a problem when the student isn’t completing their work or receiving poor grades in the class. It isn’t like games are banned in classes; it’s that there is a time and a place for playing games.
Most of the time, it is usually the same students who are playing games. It just depends on how their grades are for the teacher to take action.
“All I want is for the students to do well in class, and sometimes the games hurt their ability to do that,” Fisher said.
