Stop Disasters! Simulated Game Information and Analysis

Simulation Game Analysis: Stop Disasters!

Stop Disasters! is produced by ISDR (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) for the purpose of educating children to the risks of disasters. In the event of a natural disaster, ISDR believes children are at a greater risk for calamity. For this reason, ISDR feels that by teaching children about disaster risks early, children will have a better chance of survival.

In the wake of a natural disaster do you know what preventive measures can be taken to make the environment safer and lessen the destruction? Visit http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html. to play the game Stop Disasters! for yourself! Stop Disasters! will challenge you to plan and implement measures that are necessary to protect the population, community, and environment from tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wild fires. Whether you choose to play the easy, medium or hard difficulty level, be prepared to assess disaster risk, in order to minimize damage. Expect to receive advice, but be wary, you will have to decide whether it is good or bad advice. Did I mention you have limited time and money at your disposal to assess, plan, and implement safety measures before the natural disaster strikes? Reporters will write about how well you prepared for the disaster and how well the population, community, and environment withstood the natural disaster under your watch. Good Luck to you as you play Stop Disasters!

Stop Disasters! would appeal to students with a converging learning style. According to Kolb, the converging learner can solve problems and will use their learning to find solutions to practical issues. Converging learner’s ability to solve problems and make decisions will serve them well in Stop Disasters! where decision making and problem solving is required to minimize damage to a community, population, and environment situated in the path of an impending natural disaster. Interesting enough, although the converging learner is less interested with people it is their ability to make sound decisions and problem solve that would ultimately help to save lives. Taking the converging learning style into consideration, it seems appropriate to set decision making and problem solving skills as objectives.

Game components for Stop Disasters! are as follows: Challenging Goals, Interaction, Rules, Amusement and Raise Awareness. I was hard pressed to find any components that were weak. If you are wondering how being successful at minimizing damage to a simulated community, population, and environment as a result of sound decision making and problem solving skills be considered amusing, you are probably not alone. In the gaming world, amusement refers to motivation and engagement. Since Stop Disasters! offers three levels of difficulty as well as five different natural disaster scenarios to choose from, coupled with decision making and problem solving opportunities, a high level of interaction, clear rules to follow, and challenging goals players find themselves highly engaged. Therefore students playing Stop Disasters! would be actively involved, motivated, and as a result would find the game amusing.

Since I teach first grade a lot of frontloading would have to take place before Stop Disasters! could be integrated into my classroom. To activate background knowledge, I would introduce the concept of natural disasters through read alouds. Additional opportunities to become familiar with the topic would be provided by: providing access to informational texts about each of the five natural disasters so students could read about them in the classroom, student conducted research via the internet, and educational videos/dvd viewing. After the initial informational gathering phase, writing a class “All About” book collaboratively would follow. The book may focus on one of the five natural disasters, or include all five disasters. It may be best to choose only one of the natural disasters to write about together, to allow for groups or individual students to write their own “All About” book. The writing phase would follow with discussions about why it is important to learn about natural disasters, as well as brainstorming ways to minimize damage to the community, population, and environment. Information would then be gathered, read, and discussed concerning prevention of damage. Additional research could take place at this point. For example one preventive measure that can be taken to lessen the impact of a tsunami is to plant vegetation in shallow water, on the beach, and in the grass. Knowing what type of vegetation to plant is key. Learning about different building materials used for construction and knowing how to choose the best site for building placement is also important to prevention. Integrated into this section would be the need to know the cost involved in implementing preventative measures under budgetary constraints. Comparing how their parents need to budget in order to provide food and clothing to budgeting for preventative measuresin the event of a natural disaster would provide a bridge to this concept. At this point students would be introduced to the game through modeling. The use of an interactive whiteboard would be needed for large screen projection. The sheer volume of concepts needed to understand before actual game playing would take place would require gradual concept introduction through multiple phases. Alterations to budget and preventive measure cost values would be adjusted. For example, instead of $50,000 to spend I would change it to a value comprehendible to first graders: $5.00. Once these steps were achieved, I would play the game. When decision making is required in choosing preventative measures to implement I would employ the advice of students. Students would be required to use knowledge gained from the information gathering and writing phase to support their decisions. To encourage collaboration, table groups would be required to work together to suggest and support their decisions and advice. Because implementation of preventive measures must take place during game play, and ongoing discussion would be occuring, repeated game playing would have to take place before a game could actually be completed in entirety. After repeated game playing through modeling, gradual release would take place. Students would be paired to play the game together. Eventually, students would be given the option to play the game independently.

Note: These are ambitious plans for integrating Stop Disasters! into a first grade classroom. I would anticipate this initial plan may have overlooked critical components and processes. I would also anticipate the frontloading phases, information gathering phases, and writing phases to take months to complete. It is realistic to expect the game playing phase may not occur until January or February if not later. It might be more developmentally appropriate to implement this plan after several months of the new school year has past. Perhaps waiting until January or February may be the most appropriate time frame for implementation.