“Run Dino Run” Game

So many people equate being a teacher with knowing “everything,” and that is definitely not the case. As a young, enthusiastic, millennial teacher I find myself trying to “keep up with the Joneses” by putting on a facade. My students think of me as the “cool” teacher, and the fact that I knew nothing of this hurts my pride... Luckily, I don’t know everything and I shouldn’t be expected to. And this very story is what makes being a teacher so exciting. With that, there is always something new to learn and my high school students sure show me everyday. You would be surprised at the teens of tomorrow and the information that they acquire. These younger generations are so technologically savvy and I love to see it. It amazes me because there are even things that not only as a “teacher,” but as a millennial adult, that I feel I should know and unfortunately… I do not! But enough of the small talk, lets get write to it… no pun intended lol.

My students and I used to have tons of fun exploring new things. It sucks that we haven’t been able to do certain activities together and truly enjoy it. Nonetheless, I still find myself indulging in the knowledge and excitement of my students and their ideas.

Prior to this God awful pandemic, an activity that we all enjoyed together was the “Run Dino Run” game. It’s funny because I don’t know for sure if that’s even the name of it, but that’s the name we all gave it because of what it says once you start playing it. I know what you’re thinking…how can a simple game be considered “uncommon knowledge?” Well the cat is out of the bag and I am ready to share my glory of a story!

What are the odds that having internet connection issues can end up being so fun and take up time? Well that sure is what happened to us! One day our internet system was down at the school and some of my students (who never short of amazed me) said, “Hey Ms. Johnson can we show you something cool?” Of course I said yes, excitedly! At first, they showed me on one of their chromebooks and “go figure,” something that in all of my years of technology use that I never caught onto. A game right in front of our noggins… On that day, as time passed, the internet never cut back on during the entire class period. For our excitement... I put the game up on the projector, one of my students pressed the spacebar, then low and behold a running pixel dinosaur. I mean anybody who has used google chrome and had internet connection issues before has probably seen the dino sitting there and thought absolutely nothing of it. I know I did! The game is so fun and addicting that I even started turning my internet off just to play. Not only on that day, but during random downtime, my students and I used to play against each other and see who could get the highest scores. It was competitive and I felt so bad for crushing their little prides. But we had all hands on deck and that was something totally awesome that we shared.

In order to play this game, it’s pretty simple!

Directions:

When the internet connection error message pops up, all you do is press the spacebar/up arrow to start.

The object of the game is to make sure you don’t crash into anything (cacti).

To jump you press the up arrow, and to duck, you press the down arrow.

To make it even more fun and jump even higher, you would press and hold the up arrow.

While playing, you will also notice that the longer you go the faster the dino runs and/or the ground moves. Once you crash into something, the game is over and you have to restart it...

I bet most of you thought it was just a cute little icon on top of an internet error message? The game is so addictive and I promise you by the end of your “run” with the game, you will have said about three different curse words in your head. The game reminds me of Super Mario Bros in a way, and I believe there is also that version of the game you can play as well. But the major question is… can you play this game when your internet connection is still up and running and how the heck do you access it?

The answer is YES!!

The most simplest way to play is by visiting the URL: chrome://dino/.

Once you get there, you will see the same message you would if there was truly no internet connection. All you have to do is press that spacebar/up arrow in your keyboard and voila! YOU’VE DONE IT. (Innocently evil laugh)