I have been going through my archives trying to figure out how that picture ended up on my blog.
We have not been using DoC in class, though from what I read on this forum you have been doing amazing work with this mod, and though it is of limited use to my approach to the use of Civ in the classroom, it clearly has educational value. As a teacher I was fascinated reading in this thread how you encourage each others to sign up for Coursera classes to improve the factual accuracy of your mod. This emphasizes one of my strong beliefs when it comes to education: Exactly what students learn is of far lesser significance than building the ability and motivation for further learning later in life. Ability and motivation to learn should be worked towards in school, but much of this comes from informal settings like this community. Formal education has a lot to learn from communities like this.
I agree. I've had several blindspots in my own historical knowledge before,
and have learned a great deal from posts by Lone_Wolf, iOnlySignIn, Tigranes and civ_king before off the top of my head.
I certainly hope I've imparted with some knowledge to some users here myself.
Though we didn´t use DOC in formal class setting, it´s not unlikely that some of my students used it for making their screencasts. I recommended use of one of the RFC maps, but I also encouraged them to explore the various mods that were available on CivFanatics.
I would not recommend vanilla RFC. Although vanilla RFC serves as the foundation for this modmod, Rhye did not incorporate historical consciousness into his design and showed too much favoritism to certain civs. There were, as a result, many inconsistencies and artifacts such as Arabian stability in the Philippines where there was no Arabian presence and Rome having stability in North and South America (as Italy was not split from Rome, but the stability represented football clubs and immigrant populations where other civilizations were not given a similar treatment).
I am an avid Civ4 player myself, but you "fanatics" clearly have significant level of competence that I will never be able to match. If any of you have any input on how I can make this unit better, I would be happy to hear about it.
I remember comments like Royal Tenenbaum once saying "India didn't have horses" or awesome's misconception that Vietnam had conquered all of Southeast Asia before.
Really, the amount of misinformation on a civilization or a country is directly proportional to how
much emphasis and importance the education system and society places on teaching about them.
Like I have said in another thread, I find the amount of ignorance and misinformation concerning East Asia here in
North America to be a direct consequence of the progression of learning found in American history classes.
That is to say, a lack of emphasis on anything other than the ancient Near East, ancient Greece and Rome
and societies developed from Western foundations, which are more relevant to Western societies in tracing their civilization's lineage.
It's part of the reason why stereotypes are so ingrained and troublesome.
People won't or aren't willing to make an intellectual effort to understand certain concepts because they aren't relatable or useful to them in everyday life,
so stereotypes stand in that void in information's place.
But as an educator, you have to bridge that gap, in my opinion.
Find ways to relate the subject matter to aspects of your student's lives to make them relevant so they don't use stereotypes as a fallback.
The most successful educators I've had were able to do this with me.
The thing I would say you could do to help your students and build them a better foundation for their future studies is to nurture enthusiasm and passion for history,
as well as to encourage them to analyze and possess objectivity when it comes to their subjects of study.
We live in a world where analytical and critical thinking skills are more important and valuable to everyday life than were required and expected of our ancestors,
who led comparatively simpler lifestyles, although I am not speaking for everyone,
but from the point of view of someone who lives in a competitive, dynamic, urban and high-tech environment.
The values and skills that others may require for their lifestyles will most certainly differ.
Granted, what I'm saying is vague in application, and speaks more about the goals that would be desired to achieve and
to incorporate in your teaching style but I hope this was valuable for you.
Other than that, installing DoC (SVN version) on all the machines would also help make the unit better.
You could ask your students to play a civilization that they aren't familiar with and ask them to analyze the geopolitical and
geographical challenges those civilizations face in their timeframes and analyze what they thought about the civilization
before they played with them and how they think about that civilization after they play with them.
This kind of assignment will help them develop critical thinking and reflection skills.
Though, you may need to preload certain civilizations before class starts because of how the scenarios are generated.
I also would encourage you to read and comment on my students´blogs. You guys clearly have insight that my students could benefit from. Last week they published texts on Games and Gender, Games and Addiction, and Games and Learning. I´d appreciate it if any of you would engage with their texts. I´m grading the next batch of blog texts that will probably be up this weekend. These are more directly related to the parallels we draw between game concepts and concepts in Social Science. Student blogs can be found
here
Sure thing (if I have time), and I hope this post was helpful for you!
Now now, we don't want to abuse these poor students as test subjects, do we?
