Originally posted by
Wowwalex
Not to be a negative Nancy, but as an educator I’ve considered this and you already have several points against you:
1. It takes a huge time investment, which teachers and students generally don’t have.
2. Only a few people “get to” use the functions to run the government and it’s really hard to figure out all the tools and commands to set it up.
3. The ecological impacts are hard to see/share with others. There is no way to export graphs or data or anything educationally valuable to have a discussion about or write a paper on or to do math to etc.
I seem to remember some pre-made maps that had buildings already made, but it would be worth checking into whether any have been made specifically for educators. Basically, can you get it into the following time frame?.
30 minutes, everyone log in and do the tutorial.
30 minutes, everyone choose a specialty.
(Homework: play for at least 1 hour).
30 minutes, show how to vote/government stuff
(A few more irl weeks pass, with students having the option to play/not play, but must vote on a couple things).
30 minutes, class discussion and reflection on ecological impacts.
30 minutes, class discussion and reflection on how the government went.
Even with a plan like this, even with a preconstructed tiny world there’s no guarantee that anything educationally relevant would happen, and out of for example 24 students, only 3 or 4 would get excited enough to actually want to stop the meteor.
And then what? You get angry calls about those students neglecting their other homework and skipping school to play Eco.
Okay I’m being a negative nancy, but it’s a big uphill battle. I think the developers could actually make an educational version that streamlined things into a 4-5 hour educational experience that but that’s just not what Eco is right now.
We actually had and still have very good experiences with schools, they mostly run Eco as a overarching addendum to several subjects several times a week over at least a month to multiple months, so it probably depends on how you're setting stuff up. This is also what it was developed for, at least a month of regular usage in schools, it was never intended to be a 5-6 hour experience, nor a standalone experience or one for only a single subject. It's supposed to be used as a tool to support the lessons, not replace them.
If that works out depends highly on the respective school system, freedom of teaching, the school supervision and the teachers participating, which unfortunately is not only different from country to country or state to state, but probably from school to school.
It's still actively being used in such environments, especially by universities where it probably proved even more useful, as freedom of usage, research on Eco and games itself depending on subject and the ability to make students play it at home come in handy.
Discounts for schools are possible, if the school wishes to purchase personalized licenses (or requests the students to), otherwise our citizen subscription program (that also has discounts for schools) would be the better choice - especially if the timeframe for use is limited or pupils regularly change.
Can always reach out directly for any educational requests to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), btw.
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