At the Geofest conference I attended a seminar where this young man designed a website for middle and high school geography teachers called “Fantasy Geopolitics.” The purpose of this website is to get students more involved in current event. Growing up I remember my parents always shoving the newspaper and (at the time) boring magazines like the New Yorker in my face, and believe it or not, I hated reading it. This website is designed to have students eager to read current events and listen to the news.
How it works: “You will need to facilitate a draft in class using a single computer (and projector if possible) to have students select countries for their teams. If you want students to draft 3 countries, for instance, your draft will have 3 rounds, with each student selecting a different country each round. A class of 30 students will then select 90 different countries during that draft.After your draft, news scores from the New York Times and conflict/cooperation + tone additions or subtractions from GDELT (Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone) will update automatically every evening at 6pm Central. Feel free to test out the draft system yourself before using it in class and have students prepare for it ahead of time using the Draft Central and Resource Central pages!”
Here is the URL: http://www.fantasygeopolitics.com/#!instructions/c1aiz
After reviewing the standards for 5th graders, this is relevant in so many ways and is an exciting way to engage the students. The standards that correlate to this idea are substrands 1-3 of standard 9 : Geospatial Skills, Places and Regions, Human Environment Interaction
I think that this is only age appropriate for 5th graders and up because it is somewhat complex, but according to the man who made it and has traveled all around the United States to observe how his website is working in other classrooms, students get very competitive and excited about current events. It is a game that they all want to win, but at the same time, they’re learning all about World news.