There is so much activity going on in Civic Mirror classrooms across the continent each and every day, it’s hard to keep track. From political scandals to contractual lawsuits and outraged citizens, there are enough story-lines coming out of the CM Trenches to fill an hour long, daily video show (hey, there’s a great video reality TV show idea).

Up until now, however, Civic Mirror has not done a good job of showcasing all these awesome stories for everyone within the CM Community to see. But today we are proud to announce the release of CM2.0’s “CM World News Feed,” which feeds the most recent discussion topics, updated wiki pages, and simulated country news into one easy-to-use page. The CM World News Feed will allow students and teachers to check out one another’s hotly-debated legislation, controversial Town Hall topics, political/social initiatives, and more.

To give you an idea of the great stories coming out of Civic Mirror classrooms just today, check out the image below:

While you need to be an educator or a student with a Civic Mirror account to see the CM World News Feed, we’ll do our best to keep everyone up-to-speed with the most interesting ones coming out of The CM Trenches with this blog.

And seriously, if you’re a social studies teacher (of history, government, economics, civics, law, etc.) and haven’t requested a Free Trial, what are you waiting for? You’re missing out!

Dimensions, the newly overhauled newsletter for social studies teachers in British Columbia, now edited by Ms. Amber Rainkie, has chosen the Civic Mirror to be its first monthly showcase article.

If you’re a BC educator and want to keep up to speed on what’s happening province-wide in the subject area, stay plugged into Dimensions.

Thanks Dimensions!

After 2 years of hard work, we are proud to announce the release of Civic Mirror 2.0, a complete overhaul and reorganization of civicmirror.com!

Much, Much Better Layout

Civic Mirror now has 3 key spaces, making it clear where you are (within the program) and how to get to where you want to go. There’s (1) a Me & My Family space, e.g. “Michael” as shown below; (2) a Country space, e.g. Shire; and (3) a CM World space where teachers and students can interact with one another and talk all things government, economics, and Civic Mirror. Additionally, instructors have access to an “Educators Space” where they can share, discuss, and collaborate.

Also, each space contains sub-spaces with one or more pages attached (e.g. Michael would “Trade” for his CM family). The old layout didn’t do this at all, resulting in users often asking, “Where am I?”

Getting Started Tutorials

Back in the day, teachers and students who want to use the Civic Mirror almost had to attend a workshop or two in order to figure out how to use it. With CM2.0 there are video tutorials that show students and teachers how to get the most out of the program in the least amount of time.

To-Do Lists for Every Event

One of the Civic Mirror’s greatest strengths is its ability to extend learning outside the classroom walls. No joke, teachers often have to tell their students things like, “No discussing CM legislation after midnight on a school night.” What was missing with the online program, though, was a system to remind  students what the really important things to do were at each step of full CM Event Sequence. The new To-Do Lists do just that.

Also, students (i.e. citizens) are also able to see the items in their Government’s To-Do Lists. We did this in case elected leaders start slacking or failing to live up to their election promises. Fun stuff indeed!

New Discussion Forum Platform

While the old discussion forums did the trick, Civic Mirror’s new forum platform is awesome! While in its infancy, these forums are going to allow us to display all sorts of cool things, like real-world information (school, grade, etc.) and Badges of Civic Mirror Honor (e.g. President, Most-Posts, Status Points Leader, etc.). But most of all, they just look better and work better.

New, Interactive Event Overviews

And the last exciting CM2.0 feature we’re going to showcase today: interactive event overviews of every simulated event that make up the Civic Mirror education program.  Learning how to use a government or economics simulation can often be daunting and confusing, and we wanted to eliminate any such worry. Therefore, we created these event pages, complete with classroom video footage, summaries, planning and implementation tips for teachers, to-do lists, and relevant discussion links, so teachers and students could head into them with 100% confidence.

Request a free trial to get started with the Civic Mirror today, !

2011/12 Will Be A Great Year!

School should be fun and exciting, not painful and boring. Whether you’re a teacher or student, parent or curriculum coordinator, and whether you’re using the Civic Mirror this year or not, we hope this coming school year is a great one for you.

Welcome Back!

We’re excited about 2011/12. From a whole new web design and layout, to new discussion forums and 13 new learning modules,  the Civic Mirror will officially grow up this year. To date over 130 educators have used the program in over 70 schools across the world, and this is just the beginning. We hope we can all look back on 2011/12 and say that it was a great year for us educationally, professionally, and personally.

Welcome back!

For roughly 2 years too long, CM Educators had to learn how the online program worked by watching our “CM Online Tour for Educators” that was very out of date … like check out the old design!

We’re happy to announce that, in the next 2 weeks, we’ll be releasing the first set of video tutorials touring students and educators through CM2.0, with it’s universal navigation features, and super slick design – see below!

Here’s hoping the new design and video tutorials make using this simulation-based program for government, economics, history, and character education teachers that much more enjoyable!

If you hesitated with the Civic Mirror – or any game-based learning resource for that matter – because you thought it was pedagogically unfounded, don’t even go there. Thanks to the Guardian Games Blog for this outstanding interview with Professor Harry Jenkins. While almost 2 years old, the points he drives home about the benefits of using a game-based approach to learning are outstanding, and he also identifies some road blocks we can all work to overcome too (like schools blocking YouTube … argh!).

For specific information on teaching and learning with the Civic Mirror, check out this page.

The coolest thing about cutting-edge learning resources like the Civic Mirror is that they attract cutting-edge teachers. Mr. Ken High, from Hudson High School in Hudson, Massachusetts, is one of those teachers. He discovered the Civic Mirror at the NCSS Conference in Atlanta in 2009, began using the program with his two colleagues (Ms. Ryan and Ms. Klotz) in their Civics courses shortly after, and has been an incredible contributor since.

As a member of the Civic Mirror Beta Testing team, some of Mr. High’s ideas (that hadn’t been brought up before) included:

• a “Register of Deeds” feature that would publicize and archive the sale prices of hex sales (i.e. real estate sales)
• the “Hand of God” admin feature where teachers could remotely operate their students’ accounts
• clarifications around wordings of ‘human services’ (esp. health units)
• hiding Hidden Agenda info on certain pages,
• a unit consumption idea where a pop-up window would appear when a citizen buys a unit, asking whether they want to save it for later use, re-sell it, or consume immediately

While we won’t be able to implement all of these ideas immediately, they have all been added to our development docket and will make the Civic Mirror a better program into the future.

We were sad to learn that Mr. High won’t be using the Civic Mirror in 2011/12 as he was given a 100% World History assignment, but his contributions have not gone unnoticed, he will be presenting the program at the NCSS 2011 Conference in Washington D.C., he will officially go down as the first teacher to use the simulation with the Massachusetts social studies curriculum.

In roughly 6-weeks time, 13 performance-based learning modules will be available on civicmirror.com for a variety of courses. These modules have been designed to be dynamic and organic (instead of linear and static) so teachers can pick and choose what learning modules best fit their course content and happenings in their students’ simulated countries.

Each module opens with an “Understanding By Design” performance task, which are real world tasks that will require students to (1) utilize the course content and (2) what they’ve learned from their Civic Mirror experience in order to (3) understand something about the real world more deeply.

For example, in the Market Forces module, students become economists who will use what they learned about the principles of supply, demand, and price to pre-value their economy’s properties before an auction. Or, in the Global Issues module, students become geographers who must rank their simulated country against the UN National Index, and then compare their country’s results to United States’ real-world rankings.

What’s really exciting, though, is that these learning modules will include all the academic content students need – Civic Mirror-using educators will no longer need textbooks for these units of study!What’s also exciting is that ‘select CM educators’ will be given ‘author access’ to update these modules in their digital form. In other words, the content and quality will continually get better and better and better!

The following 10 learning modules will be usable by any teacher in any country:

• Power and the Political-Eonomic Spectrum
• Rights/Responsibilities of Citizens in Democracies
• Justice and the Judicial Branch
• Market Forces: Supply, Demand, Price
• Government and the Economy
• Global Issues and Citizenship
• Dealing With Conflict
• Viewing Your World (What’s My Perspective?)
• Financial Planning & Goal Setting
• National Pursuits of Happiness

Stay tuned!

It’s been a little over a month since the specially-selected beta testing educators have been using the new Civic Mirror with their students, and some superstars have definitely worked diligently with us to make it bug free and excellent.

Mr. Dan Ballantyne, a social studies educator from Bluevale Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, and arguably the most tech-savvy CM Pioneer to date (definitely the first to “Tweet” anything related to CM), was the first educator to use the Civic Mirror’s new “Job Board” feature. The new Job Board allows teachers and students to post services they’d be willing to pay CM$ for, or (in only the case of students) services they’d be willing to perform in return for CM$. While this feature is in its early stages, the plan is that this feature will evolve into an awesome CM service economy.

Dan’s post in the country “Sunbeam” was the first-ever CM Job Board post, it capitalized on the token economy CM provides teachers with, and it read as follows:

Recycled Products Transfer Engineer Needed

I am looking for a reliable, self-motivated, and intelligent person to be responsible for emptying the fine-paper and plastic/aluminum recycling bins in our classroom each week or as needed.

If you think that you have the “right stuff”, please send me a message via CM mail and we can talk about compensation.

Educational requirements:
– all Civics assignments are completed

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Dan followed this post with a second one that capitalized on the constructivist nature of the Civic Mirror with this one:

National Historian Needed

Are you a keen observer of human behavior? Do you enjoy writing? If so, why not apply for the position of National Historian?

Duties include:
-writing daily, professional postings on the Sunbeam wiki
-regular interviews with important Sunbeam personalities

Benefits:
-gain initiative marks
-possible salary from government if negotiated

Send an email describing your qualifications to MrBallantyne and cc Sunbeam Prime Minister Nick B.
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This was followed by Mason of Sunbeam’s legal services advertisement, one of the first CM job board posts made by a student:

I Am a Lawyer

I will fight for you in court, with an undefeated record in court your putting your trust in the right place.
just send me a message if you require legal sevice i will be charging $500 or we can work out a deal.

– – –

Thanks for all of your contributions and innovation Dan. The Civic Mirror is lucky to have educators like you blazing pedagogical trails for others to follow.

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