Help! Need beta testers for game

Hi, all. I'm desperately in need of good people to beta test Whendiji, a game to master people and events.

Its taken a while to build, but it's now a platform you can customize: Don't think my people are relevant? Should let you add a game of your own.

Hopefully, we can also talk a little here about the pedagogy of this class of game!

Thanks much,
ed

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Permalink Reply by Russell Tillmann on April 30, 2010 at 7:57am

Hi Ed, I just tried your game. I like the slide and drop function. I am wondering what type of context you are using this tool in?

Permalink Reply by Ed Jones on April 30, 2010 at 10:54am

Hey, Russell, Thanks!
I may ask you to elaborate your question a bit; here goes a try:

Students' (and teachers') exposure to world history seems to vary quite widely: Some 8th graders know deep and wide; many college graduates have (or at least retain) almost none.

What I am looking to do, then, is develop some kind of basic historical literacy. We have that, of course, but in the US it tends to run "something from ancient Greece, US Revolution, Civil War, some concepts from the 1880s-prohibition, FDR-New Deal, Hitler&concentration camps-very bad, civil rights and walking on the moon. Maybe a couple multi-cultural lessons come in, and individuals retain something of a particular African or Asian culture, but not a lot and certainly little of what was once considered the story of our advancement in ideas, freedoms, arts.

If you go to England, they have a much richer and far deeper and older sense of history. We should be a bit jealous. America's view should be different of course, but much richer than it typically is.

For example--this may be a controversial way of putting it, but what if every teacher of every child 9 and up could complete the first five levels of the game (after improvements)? What if we knew that every adult in a teaching position was familiar not only with their own specialty, but had in mind a sense of the vast sweep of History?

Studies today show that not even Ivy League grads have such historic literacy. In my own case, I finished 20+ years of schooling, and couldn't have put Julius Caesar, Nebuchadnezzar, and Richard the Lion-Hearted in chronological order. That's a pretty big gap in a basic education!! What might be the result if we put that (simple) question to adults in our schools?

Maybe I'm wandering far from your intended question. Here's another way of looking at it.

There are some 200+ people, events, battles, etc., representing 5000 years of history. What if every student at least had that small framework to go with their diploma?

Am I even close to answering?

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