THIS IS AWESOME!

For those who don't know.

SLENDER MAN: THE EIGHT PAGES is a free to play game. you download and play it off of a launcher that stays on your computer. That means you don't have to install anything.

However I'm going to guess you are like me, and your school computer is way too outdated. I tried and could not run the game on a school computer. Meaning I would have to let students use my laptop to play. Not a fan of that idea at all.

I do think it could be interesting to introduce this game to students, but only recommend it for classes of about 3 or 4 students, otherwise, 30 kids will be sitting around with nothing to do.

I also have a hard time understanding the point of them playing. You say the kids can speak directions. How so? they just randomly shout out a direction? even with a map its hard to tell where you are and where to go, and if you have any more than 3 observers, they will just be yelling. plus by the time an observer picks a direction the controller will have gone about 8-10 paces.

I think you added the directions thing to make this seem useful and constructive, and thats fine too. It would make for a good Halloween/Scare/Myths/Blow Off lesson.

You're spot on about the directions thing - making it useful vs. just playing a fun game, it just happened to coincide with the material they were working on in other units. Let me elaborate a bit:

My classes range from 20-25 students so I split them into about 3 groups and each get a single map. You're right, the on-screen map IS dark and you move slowly, but that's part of the game's atmosphere. Only one team works at a time to call out directions and this may sound nuts, but I actually want them to be frantic and just yell things.

They yell things very quickly and all choose different directions when the Slender Man appears, but ultimately as they calm they tend to focus in on a path that leads to the next general landmark. This may be due to the dynamic of my particular group of students, so you'd have to experiment with your own group.

In the end, the team with the most pages wins. Inactive teams will have a stake in the result and want to see their classmates get nabbed, so I don't find that having them wait their turn causes an issue. Again, that may just be my particular class dynamic. This sort of "practice under tension" thing makes the speech come reflexively and naturally, rather than rote and practised through ritualized phrase memory (A pet peeve of mine regarding a lot of the test-based teaching styles employed here). If they can think "NO, STOP AND GO LEFT!" While being chased by a monster in the woods, it means the material must have stuck pretty well with them.

Thanks! I've been planning a special Halloween week of lessons, so this is perfect!