Civilization Project - Step 3 and more...

This past week, I started a long-term project using Civilization 4 in Mr. Hawkins' World History classes. During our block (90-minute period) days, students will play the same scenario for half of the time. The class is divided into ten groups, with half playing at one time on five laptops with Civ 4 Warlords installed.

Here's a brief summary of how this project is being set up. For future reference, you can follow along with the notes I'm taking in class here: Civilization Classroom Observations (on Google Docs).

Our overall goals are to 1) see how viable the Civilization series is as a tool for teaching the broader concepts of history; and 2) give the students a different "perspective" on history, and perhaps use it as an inquiry-based teaching tool.

In short order, I think I'll create a projects page on the blog to compile the Civilization information - links to this and other posts, sample files (such as the scenario file mentioned herein and information given to students), and so on.

Scenario: The groups are playing a custom scenario, in which they are playing in a fictional (random) world. This will allow them to experience the discovery of their geography, instead of relying on their knowledge of a historical map to know where resources and neighbors are.

The geography included four main continents. Two civilizations were located on one continent; no teams were assigned either of these civs in order to let them develop uninterrupted until discovered. One continent held three civs; another held four. A fourth continent had resources but no indigenous civilizations (not even barbarian), to serve as a "land of plenty" for any civs who discover it (human or computer). (The students were not told of this geographical layout.)

Every playable civ was given the same starting parameters (cities, units, technologies, etc.), so that no assigned civ would be at an advantage or disadvantage.

Groups: In order to do some comparative history, five of the ten groups in each class were assigned the same civilization (the French empire, appropriate to the time period/location in history currently being covered in class). The other five were assigned other empires (Indian, Ottoman, Aztec, Chinese, Celtic) within the same game world.

We'll be able to do some comparative history within the class using the French empire(s); we can compare the other empires across classes as well.

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