How a Teacher Used Civilization IV to Teach Roman History

Education Games Research had an account of a Canadian teacher, Dr. Shawn Graham, who employed a unique approach in using games in education. The teacher set up a scenario in the popular simulation game Civilization IV to allow students to become one of the factions in Ancient Rome’s “Year of the Four Emperors” that took place in 69 A.D. after the assassination of Nero. During that year, four successive Roman generals, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian in rapid succession marched on Rome with their legions and seized power.

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learning with play

How Gaming Prepares Us to Learn More in Life

“It turns out video games are just a Trojan horse for studying interest-driven learning” – Constance Steinkeuhler

Now here’s an ironic twist: for all those decades in which academia has been demonizing video games by claiming its taking time away from teenage reading, it now turns out gaming has become one of the main catalysts for teenage reading in boys. I’m not referring to text inside the games nor am I suggesting gamifying reading with points, badges and leaderboards either. I’m saying teenage boys involved in complex games called Massively Multiplayer Online games are taking time aside from their game play to spend hour’s deeply analyzing and creating texts whose difficulty was rated to be college level or higher by experts. Reading and writing are back!

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