Many years ago I did a role-play on the Amazon, entirely by email. Students were given a draft of a ten-point sustainable development plan for the region—deliberately riddled with problems, contradictions, vagueness, etc.—and they had to build coalitions within the class to lobby for revision of the specific parts of the draft about which they cared most. Half the roles were Brazilian and half inter/transnational, mostly the usual suspects; students could lobby the deciders (it ended in a Brazilian Cabinet vote, if I recall correctly), or try to press the powerful actors who had access to the deciders. The interesting part was that I allocated the emails unevenly—how many you could send, and how many people you could cc—to reflect power and access asymmetries. Also, it had time to breathe, unlike most one-shot or compressed role-plays; I threw in a surprise every few weeks like a new World Bank loan or an episode of victim-on-victim violence, in the form of news announcements. All the email was bcc’ed to me, and while I surely did not read them all, it was easy to keep track of who was taking it seriously, being creative, etc. It did engage the students (one over-zealous young diplomat tried to start a war, but it mostly went reasonably accurately). Several students who would hang back in discussions, class role plays, etc., really came to the fore. I suspect it is rotting somewhere in Wordperfect file format 😊 so I don’t know if I can share (and this was 20 years ago, mind you), but perhaps some on the list can adapt such a concept to existing activities, given the current situation.
I’d love to hear how other folks are handling online migration. Stay calm and well, all, and remember that our students will look to us for strength and guidance....Ken Conca
From:
gep...@googlegroups.com <
gep...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Charles Chester
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2020 1:39 PM
To:
gep...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [gep-ed] New resource: Listing of climate change documentaries
External Email: Use caution with links and attachments.
Hi gep-eders,
If you are like me, all your hopes and dreams for the semester have been shattered and you are stuck with the prospect of lots of small-screen faces all zooming at you as you talk to your computer. Today, my class was to have begun it’s extensive multi-class negotiations session, one that would have been really difficult in person…and one that I fear is not feasible online. Well, it might be feasible if the students were primed and pumped to engage in an online discussion, but I’m thinking that the next month is going to entail a great deal of distraction…. If it’s hard to get students off their ADDs (advanced digital devices, not the other ADD…though who’s to tell the difference) in class, what reason is there to think a tiny zoom screen is going to captivate them?
All of which is to say that I’m not sure what I’m going to do over the coming weeks, but as a backstop I’ve put together a listing of climate change documentary films<
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__gep-2Dguide.net_climate_documentaries.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=U0G0XJAMhEk_X0GAGzCL7Q&r=8vRoE5IxCf4BFRCRiBw2WFrVSCPWA1Qy5B0bHeb6K3c&m=IevBk_I8VECuUAeduy0QIOiXAvsE8vk5eOxzEMZbfPw&s=mVQeds1tG4yxZuqBDk4t0ofUyRnnQLYVADztv55_Y6E&e=>. I’ve a ways to go on it, but thought I’d share as this might come in useful in the new reality.
Who knew that a brand of Mexican beer could have such a devastating effect on civilization? Too bad we didn’t build that wall in time. See you on some tiny screen in the dystopic future,
Charlie Chester
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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