The Fourth Estate a Reality: Students Able to Broadcast Stories to the World

The plot-lines, debates, and discussions that we observe within civicmirror.com are absolutely incredible. In-class walk-outs, impeachments of student Presidents & Prime Ministers, business deals gone bad, fascists coup d’etat, and pleas to save family members are just some example. Students, unfortunately, have had no way of sharing these stories with friends, family, and anyone else interested in learning about their simulated experience. Now they do.

Placed into the CM web interface, users will now see a “Broadcast Your Story” banner on every page.

When they click this, they will be taken to an article submission page where they will be able to either write an article about something happening in their country, OR submit a YouTube URL if they have produced a Videocast of some nature.

Once they compose and submit their piece, the Civic Mirror publishing team will review it for appropriateness, and then publish it on this blog — like right here — for the whole world to see. The stories will also feed into a “newsreel” that we added into the web-interface for everyone within the CM Community to see.  Students now have the ability to become journalists who can break a story, editorialize in order to put pressure on their political leaders, or just simply share and showcase.

Admin Security Features

The stakes in Civic Mirror are fun as well as intense. So much so that every once in a while we receive reports of students sneaking into another user’s account to discover important in-game information, to steal $$ or economic units, and other such things. To help our users protect from these instances, we added a safety feature that requires users to re-enter their password for things like money and points, Hidden Agendas, as well as a variety of teacher-admin features. While there are thieves in the real world, and while

Good News for Everyone

Because one CM license creates one simulated country scenario for a class of students to share, we have always charged on a per-class basis.

Effective immediately, our pricing structure has changed whereby the “freebie” kicks in on the second license, not the fourth. We are also rounding things up to the zero; we’ve grown tired of 99’s.

We are doing this because it’s easier for us to “set-up” and accommodate new schools now (bandwidth, support, etc.) and we’re able to recoup our costs more efficiently. Also, many schools only order 2-3 licenses and have never been able to save on the freebie. Now they can on license #2.

And No More Two-Tiered Pricing

When we initially set our rates, we looked to the textbook and e-learning markets to see what Civic Mirror offered related to existing resources, and what those resources were being sold for. We quickly learned, however, that many public schools simply couldn’t afford those rates, and so we offered them a significant discount. Now we are making that lowered rate the standard rate for all schools and districts, no matter how well or poorly they are funded.

We hope this helps some of you out, and we look forward to seeing you online this coming fall!

Our updated prices for everything can be found on the CM ORDER FORM!

Oh Yes, It’s True.

With our recently released Country Rankings feature, classes can compare and contrast how well their Civic Mirror countries are doing to other ones around the world.

For example, with roughly a month left in the 2014/15 school year, Grexico – a 10th Grade Civics class from Timiskaming District Secondary, Ontario – is the current overall leader with a National Score of 6.3/10.  As you can see below, their strong indicators are social equality (8.6) and environmental quality (8.5), while their health care (3.3) needs major improvement.

If we reverse-sort the overall standings, we see that a country named Ballhamas is currently at the bottom of the heap at 2.7/10, with Kahnada a close second. These countries have some serious problems.

Moving From “Me to We”!

What’s so exciting about this is that for the first time in Civic Mirror history, there are in-game metrics that highlight how good or bad these student-created countries are to live in. It better enables students to reflect on questions like, “Would I really want to live in our country?”, or “What do we need to do in order to make our country better?”

Every participants’ actions have effects on the nation’s overall score. This is huge! For example, if Joffrey lived in a country within minimal food and chose to consume 3 food units because he wants to score the added Well-Being Points (he only needs 1 to keep his family alive), two of his classmate’s simulated family members would die due to starvation. Up until now in Civic Mirror, Jofffrey’s only concern would be whether or not someone would sue or criminally prosecute him. But NOW, with Country Rankings and Tournaments (more on tournaments below), his actions will directly worsen his country’s National Score, specifically in this case, the mortality rate.

What’s so educationally powerful here is that National Score’s for force Civic Mirror students to get past the ME and start thinking about the WE. But wait, it gets better.

Civic Mirror Tournaments

Nothing spices things up like a little competition. And so, this past week we uploaded a “How To Create CM Tournaments” document to the Educator Space and the General Discussion forum within civicmirror.com (direct links can be found on the Getting Started page). What’s so great about this is that now – for the first time – educators can coordinate competitions with other classes.

For example, a school running multiple sections of CM could create an in-school competition with a fun prize at the end of the winners (page in year book, recognition at an assembly, etc). Various schools within a city or district could create a local-area tournament and arrange some type of award or celebration at the end of the year (winner receives a pizza party, or teachers submit article to local newspaper about winners, etc). And teacher-friends working at different schools can now create competitions between their various classes.

The possibilities with CM Tournaments are endless and exciting… all while adding fantastic learning opportunities to everyone’s simulated experience. And who said Social Studies is boring!?

Ms. Sara Shackett, Social Studies Teacher of the Year

In the process of seeking user feedback for our Country Rankings features, we learned that Ms. Sara Shackett, the superstar teacher from Lakewood, Colorado, was the recipient of this year’s NCSS Social Studies Teacher of the Year Award.

The picture to the right shows Sara receiving the award at the 95th Annual Conference in Boston, MA.

We must admit that this does not surprise us. When Sara uses Civic Mirror, the whole CM Community notices… The heights she takes her 9th Grade students to in the online discussion forums is impressive to say the least, and we have already acknowledged Sara on this blog for the incredible CM video reflections her students produce.

Example of Excellence

To give you an idea of the quality we are talking about, just read 2 of the 46 responses students made to Ms. Shackett’s online discussion question:

Ms. Shackett: “Write a GOOD in initial post about how you think today’s legislative event went. Also, respond meaningfully to at least 2 other posts. Feel free to incorporate course content here ”

Student 1: “The fact that people make foolish decisions in large groups has been well documented in scientific studies–no one wants to be the one who drags out the process for everyone else by challenging the unofficial leader everyone automatically thinks of. People in groups, and especially minorities, often just ‘go with the flow.’ In a smaller group of people, communication is vastly easier and people are more likely to express their own opinions, when placed in a more personal context. Our representatives might have been able to clearly and efficiently explain/formulate their ideas for the formation of these bills if they had only talked amongst themselves, perhaps with an audience of citizens who had the option to submit written complaints. Silent representatives would have been encouraged to speak in a smaller group of people.”

Student 2: “I think that the legislative event went fairly well. I do think that too much time was spent on the second bill and that not enough time was speant on the most important one, the budget bill. However, I did vote yes on the budget bill because I was trying to compromise. I felt like the bill had some of the values that crumbpublicans hold to be true as well as some of the values that rhineapples value. I did say that I would compromise in my ‘why you should vote for me’ speech. I might have been slightly mistaken in my evaluation, and thought that the compromise was good when it wasn’t. During the second bill, I agree that it was silly to spend so much valuable time on a bill that one of the writers knew he wouldn’t vote for. I however, do like how everyone’s thoughts were taken into account in order to compromise, which, if you will recall, is what democracy is.”

Mutual Thanks!

Congratulations Sara! You have been a shining example for everyone in the CM Community. And, if we may share your response to our congratulatory message, we also want to thank you for acknowledging us in the process.

“Civic Mirror really is a huge reason why I stood out for the award.”

Sara Shackett, 2014.

We are proud to announce that Civic Mirror Country Rankings have arrived, providing students and educators with in-game metrics that can be used for inter-class competitions, as well as data for deeper analysis and comparative studies. Let’s first explain how they work.

The National Scorecard

As the screenshot on the right shows, when an educator ends a simulated year, we now capture that country’s performance against key metrics, in a fashion similar to (but quite different from) what the Untied Nations does with the Human Development Index.

Civic Mirror has always provided students with in-game metrics that tell students how well they are doing as “individual citizens”. For example, students score points for keeping family members alive, fulfilling Hidden Agenda objectives,  participating in business deals, elections, and trials. Up until this point, the program’s emphasis has been on “How are you doing and what can change about yourself to improve your situation in this simulated country?”

Now CM provides data that tells students how they are doing as a group!

As the screenshot to the right shows, students will now receive feedback on the health and state of their nation. Inspired by our National Standards of Living module, which challenges students to use the UN Human Development Index to determine what country in the world their simulated nation is most similar to, this information will be displayed in-game.

In other words, CM now provides concrete information that educators can use to ask tough group questions… Tough questions that we often forget to ask ourselves in this age of increasing individualism:

“How are WE doing ? How are our individual actions and decisions collectively affecting this community we are a part of?  How do WE need to work together better?

Inter-Country Competitions

Country Scorecards and Rankings will also allow educators to facilitate inter-country competitions. For example, if 3 or 4 teachers in a school (or district, or state) all run Civic Mirror at the same time, they could use the Country Scorecard results as the basis for a class tournament: “What country will finish with the highest /10 score?”

Then, when Johnny consumes 3 Food units for his family, resulting in family deaths for two other students, the issue extends far beyond these three students (who may have settled the dispute in court) when their country’s Mortality Rate score plummets. Now – because Johnny’s country is in a inter-class tournament – he will be feeling all sorts of pressure from everyone in the country!

Placement Within CivicMirror.com

Country Scorecard information can be found in the following two places:

• The existing “National Info” page shows the current (real-time) scorecard stats
• A new page titled “Year-End Stats” shows how a country scored at the end of each simulated year year. You can find this page in the “Reports” section.

The Country Rankings and Tournaments space can be found within CM World, in the “Countries” section. To learn more about each scorecard category and how we calculate their /10 score, log into civicmirror.com and go to the Country Rankings Legend page.

If you don’t have a CM Account, quickly Register for a Free Trial.

Not Teaching Civic Education Is Suicide

While best known as the lead actor in movies like Jaws and Mr. Holland’s Opus, Richard Dreyfuss has been working to improve civic education for well over a decade. And we’re not talking just TV interviews here… Dreyfuss has founded an entire foundation that aims to “revive the teaching of civics in American public education.”

We’re sharing Richard Dreyfuss’ video below because it speaks to a theme omnipresent in Civic Mirror: actively preserving and protecting democracy. In CM students are given hidden agendas and one of those agendas is fascist. Seemingly there’s not much democratic about this game element, but the students playing the fascist teach their classmates an important lesson: democracies are NOT god-given! Without civic education, how will the citizenry even know what to preserve and protect? And if they don’t know that, inevitably, their democracies will fail.

So to all our users, please take 5 minutes to watch this video and share it with as many people as you can. Civic education MUST improve!!