Possible 7th Grade Social Studies Use Case for Augustus #848
GamerTeacher
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For some background, I hated school, I worked my way up in food service, and was living paycheck to paycheck with two kids until I realised I needed to go back to school, because managing a dining floor with a bunch of teenagers as servers, dishwashers, and hosts, is gotta be the same as managing a classroom and I have a LOT of teachers in my family. Sure enough, the skills cross-apply really well!
I am a middle school teacher right now, and the Rome unit came up in the 7th graders Social Studies class. No matter what middle school subject you teach in, the kiddos will ask you for help with their homework. Last year, I saw a phrasing that just SMACKED of the opening sequence of the game, and I could hear it in my head like it was yesterday, not a favorite game from 20+ years ago. So I went to find an emulator, played the heck out of it, then downloaded the Augustus version, and played the heck out of it. I loved this game so much as a kid, and I'm now trying to help with education; my kids learning styles are underserved, even with computers in the classroom -- and so are a fair number of the kids in my school. We can't use a one size fits all approach to the four different learning styles -- visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners, and the ones who can read the book/or anything and teach themselves. (Let alone people who may have multiple learning disabilities like I do: ADHD and Dyslexia both. In Hospitality, ADHD was a super power. Managing it well as an adult is hard -- as a kid? School was a nightmare. Further, when my ADHD and my Dyslexia spiraled their interactions? I was a nightmare for teachers.)
A brief note on my own LD's: I pay for Grammarly, and I edited this post to the best of my knowledge, but my editing skills aren't great at SPAG, I can't code my way out of a paper bag, even if I can speak game design and software function fluently, it is a skill I cannot do.
One HUGE problem is, the ones that can teach themselves are the most likely to become teachers of core subjects. Auditory learners teach music, Kinestetic learners teach gym, visual learners or kinesthetic learners teach art. But Art, music, and gym are all electives -- core subject curriculum gets written with single day's lesson plans tossed at the other learning styles, but these worksheets are designed for people who either innately taught themselves study skills, or never really needed them explained. For a lot of kids, that makes believing in themselves as learners, or people who are smart an uphill battle against the design infrastructure of the school itself. It is demoralizing and crushing, and kills off their internal motivation, ambition -- I should stop the impassioned educator talking psychology, unless anyone asks, right?
I want to make a website that would let the kids play through missions like Agustus on this specific 7th grade level, for the Rome unit (because 7th grade has a Rome unit) with that level of animation. That would be great for kinesthetic learners and would also get audio for the auditory learners, and a supercut could help the visual learners as a teacher who is a gamer does a Twitch-style Let's Play (my boys love those). Because the kids who can read the material and then understand it? They are doing great, but the kids with other learning styles are struggling a LOT. It would be awesome if a teacher could offer kids a Google Classroom assignment that presented the information all four ways, and each kid could choose how they wanted to complete the assignment based on what they felt like that day. All four could have built-in quizzes in various formats, like IXL's comprehension checks. Further, if it puts a computer in locked mode, so students can't exit the app until either that current assignment is done, the class time ends, or a teacher types in a teacher password! Move the controls up-stream of the bad behavior so that the kids get the conditioning that they CAN'T exit and goof off on non-learning stuff, as opposed to getting the reward circuit activation in their brains for as long as they are not caught, increasing the incentive to sneak again. It would also undercut the number of teacher-student confrontations by making one of the things the teachers have to nag students about go away.
The eventual goal would be something like Khan Academy -- a free resource at a nonprofit foundation meant to help improve education for kids who aren't natural academics. but aiming for an approach to putting agency in kids hands that every day the teacher uses the software/system in the classroom, the kiddo gets to pick which of SEVERAL different options they want for the lesson. Do they want to play a game that involves embedded knowledge testing, watch a video and answer questions? Read and then answer questions? Ask the teacher to print the packet? Listen to the audio drama version and fill out a paper packet? Again, reducing teacher and student stress alike, by eliminating this day in, day out conflict of "but I don't want to do it that way, don't you have a that I could do?" that happens in classrooms because lesson plans apply ONE format to ALL learners, and don't really give kids a choice! In every classroom, no matter the lesson plan -- 2+ kids won't want to do that work that way, that day, and across 5 classes with the same subject matter? A teacher is going to have AT LEAST one major "classroom disruption behavior incident" that makes the teachers job harder, the classroom a worse learning environment for the students who witness/are present, is the tipping point for a kid who is clearly having a whole bad day. This software could fix so many problems that I see with a background in culinary management that I think people aren't looking far enough upstream in the [cause-> event that causes -> event that causes -> which causes] chain that HACCP is used in the hospitality industry to solve.
I've reached out to the OTW [Organization for Transformative Works] for legal, I've got friends who teach history that have agreed to write common core compliant scripts, I've got friends who write fanfic and record podfic, who have agreed to donate time in the name of public service education and nonprofit education efforts. I've had ideas about how to fix the learning styles underlying "machine code bug" in the school system for YEARS, but seeing Augustus? I have one perfect, small place to start. A single unit lesson, available to middle schoolers as a "study opportunity" not part of the core curriculum, used under fair use and as a non-profit. Get feedback from the end users directly through both my placement and other teachers I know, iterate, and grow the idea.
Does anyone think they might be interested in helping in little ways to make this instance happen? I would need people who can make assets, code -- I don't even know what other skills, but I know that asking for help may get more help, and be more successful than trying to know what roles and work the team needs, or asking for specific features that I see as useful, that people who breathe software as easy as I ride a bike can solve in ways I can't even imagine.
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