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SimCity Education + Master Planner Contest

Using SimCity to teach Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects in classrooms in my opinion is an interesting thought but how does it work in reality?

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Browsing the SimCity Edu site (http://www.simcityedu.org/) it appears to still be in the  beginning (beta) phase. Teachers can make their own lesson plans and upload to the site and share with other teachers. Right now I would say there is a disappointing amount of lesson plans on the site, 9 from what I can see (but I don’t have a login), I am going to hope a lot of the lesson plans are private. I should note here, a special version of SimCity (Glasslab) for teachers won’t be released till Fall 2013,  I can imagine it is a big expense to buy 20-30 versions of SimCity for a classroom and not every school wants to spend that.

I do think SimCity can really open the eyes of kids (and adults) to show how complicated managing a city is. I personally have a much bigger appreciation to the road builders/designers in Real Life, it is not easy to build a road system that can hold the insane amount of cars we all have. Then there are all the services we need and have easy access to: police, garbage pickups, hospitals, firestation.

Master Planner Contest

I had not seen this contest before but teachers can win a trip to San Francisco to sit down with Maxis, to discuss the upcoming GlassLab version of SimCity. I have flown to San Francisco for a Sims Community Day and trust me, you WANT this. It is amazing. Also, getting 20 licenses for your class is a good prize as I said earlier getting all those licenses might be hard for a school to afford.

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Contest runs till the 19th so you still have time. There is no requirement as far as I can see that says you have to be a teacher to make lesson plans.

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