Boy Scout Games
When my son was doing Scouts, an indispensible accessory on all camping trips was the pack of "Magic" cards. The boys spent hours with them. No power needed (except for a light) and portable enough to go anywhere.
The Boy Scouts of America have created a merit badge in Game Design. Unveiled at tech-and-culture-fest SXSW, the badge's premise appears to be that playing a game can be just as challenging as traditional scouting activities like camping and hiking. Playing games of all sorts, the Scouts say, “... challenges us to overcome …
I don't think computer-oriented merit badges are a bad idea, per se, though game design is a bit narrow. Looking through the list of current and discontinued merit badges, I get the sense that it will be rolled back into a more generalist badge after a while. It's good to see the BSA embrace geeks, even if only in a council approved manner.
Heh, I had a Computer badge when I was in Scouts in Britain back in the mid 80's.
I had to write a program (on my Oric) to let someone enter a list of teams in a league and then enter their scores weekly or what have you. The program had to award points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) and then sort and display the league table after each week. It was supposed to save the league to tape as well but the examiner let me off that bit due to the slight problem that the Oric-1 had a ROM bug preventing the saving of data (as opposed to whole programs). I don't think I ever met another Scout with that badge (at any meeting of Scouts, they secretly look at the arms of their colleagues to try and work out relative status).