DAY 1: Creating a New Classroom Culture and Entering the Industrial Age

DAY 1: Creating a New Classroom Culture and Entering the Industrial Age

I explained that the point of this week’s camp was to examine if Civilization III could be used for learning world history. On Friday, students would present their thoughts on the issue to other campers. This project topic was based on Lisa and Sandy’s original curriculum ideas. I told students that we would spend the first day playing Civilization III. On the second day, we would examine the game as a simulation by looking at the modification tools that designers used to build the game. The last three days would be a mix of game play and preparing a presentation for the other camp groups⁴¹. The longer time periods for game play, greater familiarity with the game, voluntary participation, and perhaps most importantly, trust between myself and the students created a more amenable classroom dynamic. Over the course of the week, I tried several different discussion activities. Even though this was a camp context and students were not being graded, students were willing to try a broader range of activities than before.

With the smaller class size and more confident game players, I had more opportunities to observe students and make just-in-time lectures based on students’ game play. For example, seeing Dwayne about to trade metallurgy to the Germans, I intervened and asked Dwayne if he knew what metallurgy was, since he did not like to trade away technologies with military capacity. When Dwayne learned that metallurgy was good for making cannon and armor, he declared, “No way I’m giving them that!” Another time, I noted that Chris was situated next to the Carthaginians, and so I asked, “Do you know who the Carthaginians were?” I described who they were and mentioned historical debates about whether they colonized the Americas. My hope was not that Chris would necessarily remember all of the facts of my mini-lecture, but rather that I might communicate to him the sense of historical uncertainty that has always drawn me to ancient history in the hope of piquing his curiosity as well. Consistent with earlier patterns of play, students attended much more closely to concepts and discussions that were in the service of their game play.

As students progressed into new areas of the game, they encountered new concepts, prompting a barrage of questions. For example, Norman created a leader, Ivan the Terrible, and called out, “Ivan the terrible? What is he doing in the game?!” Leaders are special units developed through battle or other exceptional achievement. I explained how the game designers created leaders to try to account for important people in history, such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, or even Ivan the Terrible, by giving players a “leader” after completing a special event. I acknowledged that it was a somewhat clumsy kludge for modeling the role that leaders play in history and then showed him how to look up more information on leaders in the game manual, a practice that never caught on among students during the classroom unit. Even though, later in the unit, we did talk specifically about biases in the game, surprisingly, the lack of important individual people in Civilization III (i.e. “great man” theories of history) was not a concern to these students.

Dwayne’s game was moving fast and he asked about a dozen or so concepts, including coastal fortresses, mutual protection pacts, the corporation, refining, espionage, and cavalry, as well as if threatening other civilizations had an impact on diplomacy, and what happened when the game ran out of names for new cities. Tony asked about theology, steam power, and free artistry. Kent wanted to know about “wealth” and if he could stay at peace without having to give away his money. “These people ask for too much freaking money,” he complained. He also asked me what embargoes were and what astronomy did. Students’ games were progressing quickly now and they had even more questions than ever as they became more and more engaged in the game.

Game Discussions

Students discussed their games more today than they had in past days. Kent and Tony both left their seats several times to watch Dwayne’s game. As before, Dwayne sat quietly “in the middle,” although he was more aware of Kent's game than in the past. In some respects this was an extension of how they played before. Chris and Tony compared games, and Tony continued to walk from computer to computer between turns examining others’ play. Like before, Kent regularly spent five or ten minute chunks of time watching other games. Here, the layout of the room itself was more conducive to collaboration; students sat in a small circle and could lean over to see anyone’s game. With a more manageable group of knowledgeable players, I also encouraged more knowledge sharing among them.

In one such case, Dwayne asked me if Japan was on the game map. I explained that it was, and Dwayne declared that he was going to send a frigate to Japan to make it African.⁴² After listening to my conversations with Dwayne, Kent asked how to build a frigate so that he could also explore islands and trade with tribes, specifically Native American tribes across the Atlantic who he hoped to ally with in a war against the Romans. We discussed how Kent would need magnetism and navigation to build frigates, which would take hundreds of years for Kent to discover at the rate he was discovering technology. Kent asked why I did not tell him about getting technologies to build frigates before. I replied, “Because you wouldn’t have listened, Kent.” The students all laughed, in recognition that few of them listened to any information that did not have a direct impact on their immediate goals. After pausing for a few seconds, Kent asked if “his guys could swim” (thinking that he might send warriors swimming across the Mediterranean) and was frustrated to learn that they could not.

Building Colonies

Dwayne (Bantu) continued to colonize South America. He was still dominating his game, but now three of his cities in South America were being contested by Iroquois, who were also settling in South America. Dwayne saw this and shouted, “Wait, where are all of these people coming from colonizing my areas? I was supposed to own America!” Further, because other civilizations began trading technologies while he focused on investing heavily in military, Dwayne had fallen behind others in scientific discoveries. I showed him how to adjust his tax and science rate, but he was still concerned about his progress. His army was easily the strongest on the planet and he did not want to lose. Even successful students such as Dwayne had a lot to understand about the game, particularly balancing the different game systems (military, domestic, economy). Learning was continuous and frequently prompted by a failure to achieve desired goals – even for the most savvy of students. Still, discovering major features of the game system 20, 30, even 100 hours into game play is not uncommon in Civilization III playing.

Having learned from others’ games, Tony (Iroquois, 1880) tried many strategies to keep up with the Europeans, eventually settling on building a South American colony as the most viable one. First he tried trading for resources. As Tony entered the industrial age, he paused to scan newly available technologies and develop a plan to compete with the Europeans. He decided to pursue navigation, magnetism, and astronomy so that he could trade resources, especially horses, with civilizations on other continents. He eventually traded for technologies, maps and horses, which was a big moment for Tony, as he believed that access to horses would eradicate the Europeans’ military advantage. However, seeing other civilizations’ maps revealed that he was behind in several ways and needed to catch up. Horses alone would not make him competitive with the old world empires.

Tony decided to colonize South America and build an economically robust civilization spanning both continents that could withstand a European assault. We examined the geography of South America, identifying natural resources and weighing its attributes against the challenge of building a civilization on a continent so filled with jungle. Tony knew that jungles were bad farmland and susceptible to disease, so I explained how the game models diseases, emphasizing ways in which the game is accurate and ways in which it is not⁴³. Tony traded with the Polynesians, giving them democracy in the hope that they would be an ally against the Europeans. Tony was beginning to see the interrelationships between game systems, realizing that merely obtaining horses or saving money would not make him globally competitive; rather, he would need to build a strong infrastructure, develop his own research program, and ally wisely with neighbors. Tony was beginning to build system-level understandings of the game, understandings that he would later use to discuss historical concepts.

Now that he had navigation, Tony sent a frigate across the open seas to explore the world and perhaps meet new people. Maybe the most interesting game play moment of the week occurred when his civilization reached Australia in the late 1800s and “discovered” the Aborigines. He was the first to make contact in the class, and it turned out in his game that the Aborigines had gone for 5800 years without making contact with any other civilizations. They had five small settlements and no technologies to speak of. I explained that, when the game starts, all of the civilizations are relatively even, but, because the Aborigines were isolated and had no resources, they did not grow as a civilization. Tony opened his foreign advisor screen to examine the differences in civilizations. He scanned their location, government, and treasury. We discussed how the game weighted differences among civilizations (e.g., how “scientific” civilizations got particular bonuses). Tony did not draw any conclusions about the relative advantages of different civilizations at this point; he was more curious about the outcomes of the game as a simulation.

Tony found pleasure in sailing across the world, examining the outcomes of the simulation and spent much of the next few hours sailing around parts of the map that he was not familiar with. Tony discovered hordes of barbarians living in Madagascar. Tony could not imagine what Madagascar was; he had never heard of it before. I explained that Madagascar was settled by descendents of Australians, back when the islands were linked. I explained that they had not made contact with Africans until relatively recently. We both marveled at how strong the barbarian groups had become and Tony stated that he thought it was a relatively accurate outcome of the simulation. Discovering islands such as Madagascar prompted Tony to ask many questions about world history which would be considered unusual for most history classrooms, such as who settled Madagascar, where did they come from, and to what ethnic group do they belong. On subsequent days, Tony discovered other Polynesian islands and began asking historical questions, such as: Who lives on these islands today? What native populations are left? Or what year did Europeans make contact with New Zealand? For Tony, much of the fun was comparing the outcomes of his game with history and, through it, thinking about history in new ways.