You might be married to a gamer if...

You might be married to a gamer if…

• You know the difference between a casual gamer and a hard-core gamer
• You know the difference between a console gamer and a PC gamerYou have more computers at your house than people
• You have to talk to your husband through headphones
• You have to wait until your husband dies or finds a safe spot to ask him a question
• You dread the release of new MMO’s
• Expansion packs mean an adjustment of your weekly schedule
• You make major life decisions based on your husband’s responsibilities as a guild leader
• You know the difference between a ranged attacker, a tank, and a healer
• You understand the power behind achievements
• You understand the importance of xp
• You understand the age old question: “Do I complete all quests or only the ones that level me the fastest?”
• You understand that while some men hunt or spend seasons watching sports, other men raid.
• You could probably list all the major genres of games
• Your husband needs to own all gaming systems, but nothing is as precious as the PC.
• The PC gets updated/rebuilt annually
• You have a cabinet of spare computer parts
• The laptop goes on vacations with you
• Your husband could never live on a tropical island because the internet is not fast enough
• You have probably seen all of the SyFy shows
• You understand the nuances of true distinction between SciFi and Fantasy.
• Your husband can quote all of the Star Wars movies in entirety
• You feel well prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse

That is probably a good start…I could go on for a while after 8 years of marriage to a hard-core gamer.  As I mentioned the other day, it has given me some common ground with a lot of my boy students.  I do not listen to the same music as a lot of my previous students or necessarily watch the same shows.  I am not really a sports person, but I do know video games. 

I have thought for a while it would be fun to try and incorporate video games into the classroom a bit.  Tomorrow I am going to be explaining a classroom management idea I tried based on video games.  Some other ideas I have thought would be fun to use in the classroom:

Use video games as motivation for reluctant writers.

• They could describe a character
• They could write about a quest they completed from the point of view of a character in a game
• They could write about their favorite games and why
• They could describe how they would change an ending to a game

For practice with setting:

• They could describe the setting of a game in detail
• They could describe how they would improve the setting of a game
• They could write a new story that takes place in a game

They could imagine themselves as a game architect and design a game.
They could draw characters for a game.

Video Games usually tell a story, so they have the potential to be used as motivation for reluctant readers and writers.  I want to work on putting together some writing prompts and project ideas based on video games.  Have you ever used video games for discussion in your classroom?  What are some ways you would like to incorporate games into your classroom? How do you think they could motivate some of your students, especially some of the boys?  (There are girl gamers, too.)