The Internet Game

I've been thinking about how to teach fairly young kids about how the Internet works, and I've come up with a game. I think this would be appropriate for 3rd to 5th grade or so. I call it "The Internet Game."

Begin by separating about a third of the class to be "computers," then the rest are "routers." (This could also be half and half, which would make it easy for the two groups to switch roles after a while.) The computers get into a large circle, with the routers all standing inside.

The computers get to write simple "packets" on index cards, addressed with To, From, and Message. These packets have to be sent to other computers. These could be free-form, write messages to whoever you want; or there could be a rule that you must send a message back, which would simulate a client/server request and response. The routers must pass the packets so that the packets get closer to their destinations. The routers aren't allowed to move from their spot, but they can spin to face other people.

For a more advanced version, one could split the computers into clients and servers, and assign specific server roles. One student could be the search engine, which would send back information about other servers. Pages sent from servers to clients could have "links" to other pages on other servers. The teacher could choose a router to break (sit down?), forcing packets to be routed around. The routers could be arranged a certain way to produce bottlenecks.

I'm not in the education field, so I don't know what primary schoolers are being taught about the Internet, or how. I know interactive games are much more interesting than drawing diagrams on a chalkboard. This game seems a little reminiscent of the Telephone Game, used teach very young primary school kids about rumors. I would be shocked if something like this Internet Game doesn't exist, but a quick Google search didn't turn up anything like it. If you're an educator, or otherwise, please let me know what you think!

Release Mode

School is in full tilt, with no sign of letting up through Spring Break. In senior project, we're now into what we software engineers call "Release Mode." We're coming up to The Big Deadline, and we're churning out code and documentation as quickly as we can.

We have a number of big features in Volumizer that are still not quite the way we want, but we don't have time to really do all of them justice. It's not for lack of trying, mind you; I don't function as well without sleep as some of my fellow students, but I haven't been getting my full, comfy 8 hours a night for the past couple of weeks either. I get up, start working on this or that project, maybe go to class, program more, and roll into bed. There's just too little time left to make any more huge changes. We tested with users, found our weak spots, and we'd be golden with two or three months more. But that's the breaks, I guess. Software has one distinct similarity to fine art: it's never finished, only abandoned (to quote Da Vinci). We just have to finish up the most important stuff, and leave any future work to our sponsors.

I'm still quite proud of what we've accomplished. Our project would've been nearly impossible 5 years ago, bleeding edge 2 years ago, and even today is part of the first generation of 3D programs for the mainstream web. Even with its limited range of functionality, it still lets anyone who can use a paint program make their own 3D models. We've dealt with changing internet specifications, buggy development browsers, and a ton of other eye-opening experiences. We can now say with confidence, "Yeah, I've done that before." And that's worth everything.

Pet Pictures

I present you with some shameless animal pictures:


Apollo really enjoyed the mud pit at the dog park. Until he got home, that is.


Marley thought my drink was delicioso!


A pile of sleepy.


Can you tell that these two like each other?

Al hasn't been posing for as many photos, but worry not, he's still stalking around the house.