M7 Post 6: Integrating Gaming & Simulations
Journey 2050- Agriculture Game
Instructions for accessing the game: Go to the upper right corner where it says "Play Now". If it asks for a teacher code, you can enter CAEA. It is a free game about global sustainability as the human population increases.
In this game, there are six levels that explore different sustainability issues across the globe as well as a career matching game. I went through and took a screenshot from each game, and included an explanation of each game level.
Sustainability: Nutrients
In this level you can plant beans or maize and determine if the Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium in the fertilizer helps the crop grow. The village is in Kenya, and that is where your garden is. Maize and beans have different nutritional needs, grow time, water usage, and market value.
Sustainability: Water
In this level, you are trying to conserve water. You are given a finite amount of water that you need to stretch throughout the growing season in order to grow your crop. You can see from the picture above that there is a difference in the water required to grow beans, maize, and potatoes. The highest value crop, potatoes, requires the most water to grow. If you do not give your field enough water your plants will suffer and you will not get as much money when you sell them.
Sustainability: Economy
The goal of this level is to get the most money at market. The market fluctuates based on the demand of the product. There are times where market sales are high, and times that they are low. You want the most income possible in order to afford to grow another round of crops.
Geography: Land Use
This level uses real data to give students perspective about the change of available farm land over time. It reinforces the idea that the percent of agricultural land had decreased, the population of humans has increased, meaning that we need to feed more people on less land. This is why sustainability is so important, because we want the most yield of a crop on the least land.
Geography: Where In The World?
This functions similar to a review of the other levels, with some trivia thrown in. It requires students to test their knowledge on the definition of agriculture, the equipment used in the agriculture industry, as well as a review of what the percentages of people and agriculture land existed in the 1900s and 2000s.
Careers: Who's Who?
The Careers game helps pair a student with a career based on their interests. They get to choose the outfit, hair, facial features, etc. so that they can see themselves in that career. I tried it out and it selected a PR Communications career for me. The careers are all related to agriculture in some way and I thought that the variety of questions was appropriate for grades 7-12.
Use In The Classroom
Ag In The Classroom offers slideshows and supplemental material that can be used alongside this game. If you haven't checked out Ag In The Classroom before, I highly recommend it! It's function is to provide already created agriculture lessons to other content area classrooms. The lessons that accompany this game fit NYS Standards in science, history, and social studies. Here are some sample objectives it gave me using National Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Standards:
I would pair this assignment with a worksheet that has checkpoints along the way. This will require students to analyze their crop yield, water usage, fertilizer usage, and develop a better understanding of the economy through market values. They will also have to justify their farming decisions. For example, they will have to explain why they chose maize over potatoes in the water usage simulation.
Included in the worksheet would be challenges that require critical thinking. Students will have to explain why they chose certain expenditures over others during low budget years. Another interesting approach would be to have students keep a journal that records their progress. Prompts could include "What decision impacted your farming the most today" or "How did your choices affect your available resources". They may also experience climate events that change their decisions on their farm, and they have to rationalize their farming decisions. This helps connect real world agricultural practices with global issues happening today.
Another interesting approach would be to have students keep a journal that records their progress. Prompts could include "What decision impacted your farming the most today?" or "How did your choices affect your available resources?".
I believe that students should be able to go through this game in a self-paced manner. I would provide printed guides to assist with navigation as well. Before students leave class, they would be expected to write a short "exit ticket" on an index card. The prompt would be: (1) Identify one decision you made, (2) explain why you made that decision, and (3) Predict how it will affect your farm long-term.
Differentiation & Assessment
For students that have difficulty answering open ended questions that follow along with the game, I would recommend that those students get a worksheet that they fill in the blanks. That way they still get the benefit of the lesson but don't have to write out in complete sentences if they have motor skill difficulties or other accommodations listed in their IEP or 504. Another modification could be paired playing, meaning that students are required to play the game alongside a partner. This would help students who have difficulty navigating the game will have another student to help guide them and troubleshoot.Journey2050 can be a tool that promotes sociocultural learning theory if it scaffolded correctly. The game alone helps students analyze how culture, geography, and economics shape farming decisions, while placing them in real-world global systems in Kenya, India, and Canada. The intentional scaffolding that it needs is opportunity for partner or group discussion. For example, by modeling thinking out loud "I notice that growing maize saves water but I don't get as much profit" it can help students develop stronger decision making skills and deepen their understanding through guided interaction. That being said, I believe that pairing peers will increase engagement with the content (Coopilton, 2022, p. 232).
This game enables students to showcase their ability to "create, innovate, and produce" (Gee, 2010, p. 14) while also providing feedback for how students can improve in their agricultural practices. Similar to the game Civilization that Gee mentions, this game is also realistic because it incorporates real world history and statistics (Gee, 2010, p. 19). Using this game can promote critical thinking skills when students are given a scenario and they have to give reasoning about the choices they made on their farm.
While the game simulates farming in Kenya, it can easily be applied to use of land in the United States. In the game Urban Science, students are communicating about complex scientific issues and creating proposals for urban development (Gee, 2010, p. 21). In Journey2050 students are evaluating similar land use but from an agricultural perspective. Assessments are conducted through analysis of exit tickets and journal entries. Their responses to checkpoint questions will determine if the learning goals have been met.
References
Gee, J. P., & Schaffer, D. W. (2010). Looking Where the Light is Bad: Video Games and the Future of Assessment. Edge: The Latest Information for the Education Practitioner, 6(1), 3–19.
National Ag In The Classroom. (2024). Journey 2050 Lesson 1: Sustainable Agriculture (Grades 9- 12). https://agclassroom.org/matrix/lessons/582/
Nutrien. (2026). Journey2050. https://www.journey2050.com/
I really like the play on "Ag", which is a chemical symbol for gold, but also is an abbreviation for Agriculture. There is a real chance here to explore social justice with its connection to water and land access explored in Coopilton (2022). Students can explore what the characters have available to them and why in the different settings such as Canada, Kenya, or India. They can explore what the prices of the agricultural products earned them and why in the different regions. Using insights, they might reflect on how much farming can garner in different regions of the world and perhaps speculate on how much of that stays in the local economy or how much is purchased by companies or governments and exported out of the country. Scaffolding will need to happen to have enough information to reasonably reason through these steps, but it may help students build a larger sense of the impact of global trade on local economies and food access. It would be interesting to explore how communities can work for change for agriculture and food access as well.
ReplyDeleteI come from farmers that had to abandon their farming. I acknowledge that my understanding is limited and you must have a broader perspective from working in the incredible school where you are. My grandfather suffered from back issues and had to switch careers. He came from immigrant farmers from northern Netherlands and North Eastern Germany who were promised land and opportunity. He rented the farmland and at times, he was also paid to keep the land fallow to control food production. To me, this is reminder that we have the ability to produce enough food to address food insecurity, but the government chooses to not purchase directly from farmers to meet food needs. Other government services could support our farmers and communities, allowing nutritious food to make it into the area instead of rot in the fields because there is not enough profit or ability to pay for harvesting. Sometimes investments such as those you explained such as choosing water use or crop type lead to failed investments and low return for farmers. My other side of the family sold off parcels of their farmland to get by and eventually had to sell the historic property and Dutch farmhouse. They were not so successful with their farming and the farm gradually turned into a suburban block. Innovation and business sense are so important for small farms to make it in this economy. Sustainability and adaptability seem to be at the heart of your game. These skills are important for any career.
This game shows why Cornell Cooperative Extensions, local coop programs that offer classes and training, and community gardens are critical to us keeping our connection to the earth and us sharing best practices with each other. I'm reminded of seed saving, the importance of biodiversity among plant species, and that local economies might have nutritional options that may appear unusual to us. Seed saving can mean survival for the following year or selecting the best of the plant variety. In another sense, a high value agricultural product might make a lot of money for the farmer, but it may not represent the local diet. People make and eat different food around the world and foods appealing to us might displace traditional nutrition sources or limit the biodiversity of the area.
DeleteThis game is simple enough to help students focus on the basics and do some serious higher order thinking to break down concepts and enter into metacognitive thinking. Strategizing and sharing our strategies gets us to that zone of deeper planning. From there, students could get to social justice, history, immigration, evolution and change in communities, and the complex interaction between large scale and small scale farming. Your plans sound well-designed and support the kind of learning that you aim to accomplish. There is plenty of differentiation and there are possibilities for alternative grouping. I think that feedback from the game as discussed in Schamroth & Gerber (2021) would help inform students on how to improve and make adjustments to their gameplay.
References:
Coopilton, M. (2022). Critical game literacies and critical speculative imagination: A theoretical and conceptual review. Open Journal System SuUB Bremen. https://doi.org/10.48783/gameviron.v17i17.196
Schamroth Abrams, S., & Gerber H. R. (2021). Achieving through the feedback loop: Videogames, authentic assessment, and meaningful learning. In T. L. Lynch (Ed.). Special issues; Volume 1: Critical media literacy: Bringing lives to texts (pp. 214–227). National Council of Teachers of English. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/empire-ebooks/detail.action?docID=7101610.
Steven, I really enjoyed reading your personal connection to agriculture. I'm sorry to hear that your family wasn't able to keep much of the land. In my area it seems like the corporate farms are taking over every little farm and it leaves little for young people who want to start out in farming. My boyfriend and I have been looking to buy a small amount of land so we can maintain a small farm (I already have 15 goats that live at my parents' farm), but it is so hard to find something with the large farms taking over.
DeleteI'm hopeful that as the population rises that the government is able to work out some better support for farmers.
I love your ideas for how to incorporate the simulations into the classroom. I especially like the idea of having students keep a journal with prompts for each day with that align with the simulation. Your differentiation ideas were also thoughtful. I think in addition to having students be able to use fill-in-the-blank if they struggle with open-ended questions, you could also use sentence starters for those students as well so they can generate open-ended responses but have a starting point for that generation.
ReplyDeleteOverall I love the simplicity of the simulation and the different stages of the simulation - each with a different focus. This is a very thoughtful simulation design that seems perfect for your agriculture classroom.
Alyssa, this is a really strong and thoughtful breakdown of the game and how it can be used instructionally. I can tell you’re clearly thinking about how each one connects to real-world systems and how students can actively engage with those ideas! It seems like such a unique game, with a focus on agriculture and aspects of science and geography. Very cool!
ReplyDelete