What Are Students Doing When They Aren’t Paying Attention In Class?!

That’s the question that teachers at Dobbs Ferry Middle school are asking themselves. When they look over kids’ shoulders to see what they have been doing on their chromebooks all of class, they see a  colorful snake slithering around the screen eating various fruits. When they realize that they have been playing the game Snake the entire class they start to wonder why this game is so addicting.

Snake is a game where the players have to direct the snake around the grid with the arrow keys and try to collect fruit to make the snake longer. The players have to watch out for obstacles or their slimy creation goes BOOM!

As a teacher, you must be wondering Why doesn’t the school just block it? The snake game is connected to Google. If the technology department blocks snake, Google is blocked altogether. If you don’t want to search things up then it’s not a big deal, but if the school blocks Google, then all of our learning resources are gone. Google is not just a search engine. It connects to all of our school sites like Google Classroom, Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, and Slides. 

“This game is addictive because it is simple but it is hard,” said an 8th grade student at Dobbs Ferry Middle School who wants to remain anonymous so that his teachers don’t find out that he’s been playing Snake during their classes. He plays this game frequently during his classes and….He’s right! This game is so simple. All it is, is moving a colorful snake around the screen like a Pac Man from the classic arcade game. 

Then why is this game so hard to beat? There are many obstacles such as the walls in some challenging modes, and in other modes, blocks magically appear. Mostly, it’s the colorful creature itself. To win the game, players have to fill up the entire grid with their snake, but when things get squishy it’s hard to stay between the lines.

How is the school going to solve this issue? I don’t know. Will the district find a way to block this “unblockable” game? Or will kids continue to be able to waste away their class periods? In the meantime, my best advice is to be sneakier than your students and to keep an eye on the Snake before students slither further away from their studies.