Public school teacher wanting feedback

[Joshua Warren]

Hi all, so I will try to keep this to bullet points

1. I am a public middle school teacher currently teaching Social Studies in a Title 1 Middle School in Los Angeles County, California. I teach 7th, which is world history from roughly fall of the W. Roman empire (476?) to 1750s..ish
2. I am currently working with 2 other history teachers at the high school level (10th grade, which is world history from 1750's..ish till modern, and 11th which is US history from 1850's until modern). And an Vice Principle who is NOT a history teacher, but likes the idea of what we are doing.
3. (please don't be upset at us or judge on the divisions and timelines, they are state and federally mandated, we all know there are so many better ways to work with and interpret history, and so many things that are being left out, just trying right now to work in what is required by law in our state and country)
4. I want ANY AND ALL of your thoughts, ideas, criticisms, and musings on using Civ 5 in the classroom as a way of teaching historical concepts.
5. I am picking Civ 5 specifically because it is what I have a computer lab of 36 computers ready to go with my students, that is just the variant the district picked for us, please don't take it as a personal affront.
6. I and the three other aforementioned people will be reading the responses even though this is just one account, we promise to read all, respond to some and dismiss none, no matter how critical.
7. Please feel free to PM with any questions or issues, we will respond.

Optional: A little about me, the account holder. My name is Josh, I grew up an only child with two working parents and a working Nintendo. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time on video games. I did not do well in school, graduating with a solid 1.8 GPA, and quite a few trips to the principles office. I found solace in video games and the worlds they offered. I did a few years at a junior college and eventually made my way into a 4 year with a major in Ancient History, I fell for the Civ franchise at that time because I really truly think it has educational and historical merit.

I write this just to let you know where I am coming from as a person and a player. I want to see this in the schools, I think I would have benefited from it as a student when I was younger. You all can help, just give us feedback, anything, good or bad. Thank you all for your time, PM me anytime. I will even talk on the phone like a real person and if you are local to the Lancaster/Palmdale California area, I will meet you in person and buy you a coffee for your ideas and thoughts.

 

[Synobun]

There was an effort made a little over a decade ago to offer an educational scenario via Civilization 3 in Canadian schools. It was called HistoriCanada.

https://www.engadget.com/2007/06/04/civilization-iii-mod-teaches-canadian-history/
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007...d-civilization-iii-to-teach-canadian-history/

The CFC thread for it: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/historicanada-the-mod-of-canadian-history.204775/

As far as I know, it was never completed and fizzled out.

 

[Joshua Warren]

Oh and also, feel free to cross post this to any other thread. Like I said, Civ 5 is just the one we have, would love to get feedback from players/coders/moders/hackers of any of the other variants

 

[Plotinus]

I think it's a great idea and would have mentioned the Canadian project had Synsensa not already done so.

My instinct would be to say: Civ is great for showing the shortcomings of attempts to model history in game format. What does Civ *not* do well? What historical processes/factors does it miss out or fail to model effectively? And why is that? Those are the interesting questions, I think.

 

[ashendashin]

Typically I wouldn't do this, but since you'll be affecting kids with this you might try getting in contact with @Gazebo
He's a historian that leads the Civ5 Community Patch Project and made Vox Populi, an overhaul that adds a lot to the game that, in my opinion, does a better job at the abstractions, exaggerations, etc. in civ.

 

[Ravellion]

I think the scenarios might be particularly useful, particularly "Into the renaissance" to show the various powers and conflicts, and how far away Constantinople was to the west, and how disliked they were ( and hence why it fell to the Turks), and the other scenario that might be fun to show is the age of exploration one, showing the technologies that made colonization possible, and the incentives there were to do so for the first colonizers (gold, mostly).

The civil war scenario might be interesting to show a few snippets of US history, but it is a bit of a war slog if you ask me. The fall of Rome scenario could also be used, but I think it oversimplifies the barbarian invasions too much, and is also just an endless war.

 

[lindsay40k]

You could try making a true starts map with resources arranged in a way that chimes with Jared Diamond's observations in Guns, Germs, and Steel

Or even just abstract and simplify it a bit; one civ has loads of iron and horses, another civ has loads of gold and silver, now, which one is going to end up conquering the other and churning out homespun supremacist propaganda to justify their status

One limitation is that no Civ engine really depicts the role that longitude and latitude played in the trade and propagation of domesticated species. Also it weakly accounts for the scarcity of luxuries - conquistadors attached a different value to gold and silver than was put on it by indigenous cultures they encountered who had buckets of the stuff. In civ 5, the linear increase in local yields from each mine (plus the geometric increase provided by building a mint) makes each one an economic asset (assuming happiness neutrality of the population needed to work it), which doesn't really reflect how the thirty-first deposit you find IRL is of limited marginal benefit without a globalised trade network to export it to.