Towards Gaming in the Classroom

[Brundlefly]

On February 20th of this year, an article by the Education reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was published on the publication`s website. Some academics say video games might provide lessons for teachers on how to captivate students and make learning interesting, Amy Hetzner writes. One of the games studied for the piece was Civilization III. Kurt Squire, an assistant professor in the School of Education at University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the one who specifically took this title on. What he found in doing so, according to Hetzner, is that [s]tudents learned how resources affected civilizations in the past, why colonizations occurred and that they had to do research to succeed in the game.

This is a thread for comments about the most recent Civ3 News Item, "Towards Gaming in the Classroom".

I wonder what the kids reaction was when they learned that a spearman could defeat a tank...

[Rasputin]

never had a spearmen beat a tank yet !!

[Aqualung71]

A spearman can't beat a tank. You must be imagining things

[Plotinus]

Maybe discussion of these things in the classroom will see an eventual end to people claiming that highly developed nations have never fought poorly developed ones, or talking about that mysterious historical character "Napolean", the strange political doctrine of "facism", or believing that every country has a "capitol"...

[LzPrst]

I learned lots from computer games. old classics like caesar2 has tons of historical info on every building, god, soldiers and lots of other stuff about the roman empire. also IIRC conquest of the new world had little bits of historical info etc fed to you every turn. And all civ games have extensive encyclopedia functions on units, wonders, improvements etc. Civ 3 is probably the most extensive. I nearly cried when I read how the Mausoleum of Mausollos was destroyed. It displays human nature so simply and nakedly that it can make you nautios...

[LzPrst]

And just for the record this is my 300th post! And monday was my 3rd year anniversary here at Apolyton, YEAY!!!

[Mad Bomber]

Personally,I think the idea a good one. It can be used to expain realpolitik, and can help to put historical events into the 'big picture' view of our world. The one thing that a teacher would have a hard time trying to explain is how a nuclear war could increase global warming

LzPrst:

Congrats on 300, only 700 more and you are a King. At your current rate that would be in 2111. Better get that whip out!

But for now,

[vmxa1]

I was wonder how long before this was mentioned and would it soon lead to happy dances.

[Theseus]

I think this (education, not LzPrst's 300th post (congrats, though)) is awesome. I've been advocating it for quite some time. If it isn't a standard methodology in history / politics / social studies education by the time I have kids, I'll be doing it myself.

Of course, that may make my child, the future Podos POTUS, a bit prone to warmongering as a general solution, but what the heck.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Theseus
Of course, that may make my child, the future Podos POTUS, a bit prone to warmongering as a general solution, but what the heck.

Hey, it worked for George H. W. Bush (not a complaint, mind you).

I was recently telling my boss, who has a son about 6 or 7 years old, about CivIII and digressed into how it might be used to spark a kid's interest in history. Heck, it did it for me. I suppose at a certain age, it'd be easy to play the game without realizing it has any historical base, but it only takes a small seed of awareness for the spark to catch.

Of course, you'd have to beware a child turning in a history paper that started off "Crusaders are slow-movers with 5/3/1 A/D/M, and are the only combat unit that can build forts. They are produced by the Knights Templar great wonder, which becomes available with Chivalry."

[Theseus]

Yeah, but that kid would be summa *** laude at AU!

[joncha]

Originally posted by Theseus
Yeah, but that kid would be summa *** laude at AU!

haha... you said "***"

[Solomwi]

LMAO! Apparently the filter has an issue with certain Latin words.

[vmxa1]

Yes it is not smart enough to see some terms as harmless, such as co*ked hat. I used c-o-c-k hammer and got it blanked.

Just a bit too broad a filter.

[Rasputin]

filter jsut not clever enough to work out the context of the word .

[Plotinus]

Always the way with American sites... I once got locked out of a chatroom for talking about mosquitos sucking blood, and I saw someone else chucked for saying they came from Cumbria... discussion of Balaam's Ass also appeared to be impossible. Americans are so prudish!

[vmxa1]

Last I knew this was not an American site.

[Plotinus]

Really? Well, I do apologise. What a slur!

[joncha]

At least we can say dick now, as in Cheney. I wonder if he graduated with any honours.....

[Admiral PJ]

I think civ could teach kids history, for example how early civilisation knew little about the geography of the planet, and had to explore to discover resources and places to expand.

Civ is not very realistic compared to reality, but it can teach things like teamwork or even blackmail with your nearby civilisations.. with allying for wars . The mutual protection pacts can be quite realistic , similar pacts started world war 1 and 2 .
I hope its not used to teach warmongering, people who think wars are the only way to solve things really are quite stupid. Its good civ shows you get a bad reputation if you use evil methods or break treaties. Its a shame the resource system isn't very well developed in civ, with proper quantitative resource stocks and markets, but the Economic warfare aspects are very informative (cutting off resource roads or using Embargoes) .

[Oncle Boris]

I don't see how Civ could teach anything to anyone older than 12-13. Unless they truly are idiots.

[:) Smiley]

no shortage of those out there.

The question though, do strategy games create future warmongers?

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
I don't see how Civ could teach anything to anyone older than 12-13. Unless they truly are idiots.

It would definitely teach liberals a thing or two about "real politik."

I've had a Civ3 club for my middle school students for a couple years now. It is a lot of fun to see them come to certain decisions when playing a game. More often than not, their game-play is in direct line w/ their personalities. But, I do feel they get a great deal out of resource management, etc.

[swat-spas2]

Idiocy is generally simply the disinterested nature of a person to know of a particular subject, often through a lack of balanced exposure to it. The average person is not so exposed to even the minute wealth of historical data packed into the civilopedias of civ games. Nor are they so inclined to be interested in the occurences of other culture's rich past history (or even their own more accurate one). I consistently amaze people with what I would consider basic trivial information. Thus they would not be idiots necessarily and still not know at the age of 12-13. More advanced subjects such as strategies which relate to real-world political and strategic interactions are much harder to grasp, ie many people are easily dissuaded by simple mass media marketing of propaganda. As such those 'idiots' would subsequently be less so by exposure to a historical PC title like this. (Even RON has a good deal of stuff to read up on)

[LzPrst]

read description on all improvements, wonders and units. theres a LOT of info there...

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by swat-spas2
Idiocy is generally simply the disinterested nature of a person to know of a particular subject, often through a lack of balanced exposure to it. The average person is not so exposed to even the minute wealth of historical data packed into the civilopedias of civ games. Nor are they so inclined to be interested in the occurences of other culture's rich past history (or even their own more accurate one). I consistently amaze people with what I would consider basic trivial information. Thus they would not be idiots necessarily and still not know at the age of 12-13. More advanced subjects such as strategies which relate to real-world political and strategic interactions are much harder to grasp, ie many people are easily dissuaded by simple mass media marketing of propaganda. As such those 'idiots' would subsequently be less so by exposure to a historical PC title like this. (Even RON has a good deal of stuff to read up on)

Well said.

[Son of David]

SimCity has already beaten Civ to the post many years ago.

http://www.fi.edu/fellows/fellow3/ap...00/lessons.htm

[okblacke]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
I don't see how Civ could teach anything to anyone older than 12-13. Unless they truly are idiots.

Game theory.

Even if you don't like the game, there's a lot to learn from it.

I think it would be interesting to point out where the game deviates from history, and why, both in terms of historical accuracy and in game playing.

People are very creative about spearman beating tanks here. A classroom could be too.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Theseus

Of course, that may make my child, the future Podos POTUS, a bit prone to warmongering as a general solution, but what the heck.

Theseus, just don't let your kids read your sig.....EVER!

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Thriller


Theseus, just don't let your kids read your sig.....EVER!

Oh, come on, every kid should see the wisdom in making Marine+Berserk Armies amphibious!