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"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world." -Walt Disney
I've said before (in my book among other places) that I thought I'd be "done" creating lessons by the end of my 3rd year of teaching. Then it was my fifth. Then tenth. Then I realized, I probably never would be - and that's the way it should be!
Imagineering calls the idea of constant improvements "plussing" and to me it was best summed by Disney VP Matt Conover who said, "No experience is too small to be excellent."
I've tried to emulate that as much as possible. It is usually a couple lessons per unit that I'm able to really "plus" in a given year, but I keep doing it.
That led to my latest and greatest work that I'm excited to share with the world:
China: Might or Mandate?
Might or Mandate is the 3rd "This or That" lesson I've created with the tremendous help of my colleagues. 12 years ago (wow...), they started as very simple choice based game on the American Colonies. It was cool and students enjoyed it, but I wanted more depth.
So, a couple years later I made Rome: Provide or Conquer? I wanted students to experience the Fall of Rome through the eyes of the emperors who tried to stop it. Students would make a choice each round which basically amounted to "bread or circuses" for the people. Then, a historical event would occur and they'd choose their response from a short list (which ultimately became just two for each situation.)
They had a scoring sheet where they tracked population, order and wealth. Their choices would add or subtract from these scores throughout the game.
I tried to make the thing look as awesome as possible. I wanted kids to really think it was a professionally made game. However, I also wanted to share it. So, I went out of my way to use copyright free images and artwork throughout. It looked good, and students definitely enjoyed it.
So, I made another one just last year - and 10 years is a lot of time for new technology for plussing to come along!
The Renaissance: Profit of Patronage used AI-generated images to more closely match each scenario to the visuals of the game. Once again, students definitely enjoyed it. More importantly, I felt like they understood the purpose of patronage better than they had in my career. When they had to personally "spend" their gold in game to earn influence but then saw that influence directly connect to increased power - they got it.
So, I made another one this year - and (apparently) 1 year is a lot of time for new technology for plussing to come along!
China: Might or Mandate still is built on the bones of the Settlers of America Colony Game, but looks wildly different now. I wanted to make a game to help students understand the very foreign concept of the Mandate of Heaven and how it led to a dynasty cycle in China.
This time, I decided to go all out and use every tool and toy I've played with over the last year. The name now feels more like a video game than ever before. It has video cutscenes for every decision (a huge plus over the text from Settlers!) and voice overs throughout the game (a big step forward from the anachronistic "Silence please!" voice from Provide or Conquer?)
And I'll happily brag a little - it's awesome!
The reason I feel so comfortable bragging is that, though I did put a lot of time into writing and laying the game out, most of the work wasn't work at all. It was me typing into an AI prompt and letting technology work it's magic.
For the voice overs, I used Hume.ai to "clone" the Mortal Kombat announcer's voice and then simply typed up the script and recorded the lines.
For the images, I used the soon-to-be-closed Google Whisk with the simple prompt of "an image of < x > in the style of a 1990s Disney animated movie" (I was thinking Mulan) to create high-quality images that exactly fit my scenarios. Then, after doing all that a colleague showed me what he was doing with AI video animations and I knew I had to give it a shot. I took the Whisk images and dropped them into Grok Imagine and, in most cases, did nothing more. I just clicked the animate button and boom - done. For some, I gave some additional instructions, but not for most. It was "smart" enough to interpret the images and give me animations (and sound!) that fit it perfectly.
The scoring system for this version of the game is quite complex. The scoring sheet uses Excel (well, Google Sheet) formulas that I never could have made myself - and still don't understand. That's fine. AI did that for me too. I uploaded my sheet to Google Gemini and just told it what I wanted.
"I want the values in column 8 to only go to zero, not to negatives."
Boom, here's your formula.
"Can I make it so when students click on a check box it resets the values of only that line to a preset value?"
Boom, here's your formula.
Every crazy idea I had was possible. I cannot overemphasize how big of a deal this is. For so long, so many of my ideas have been limited by my own lack of ability - both artistic and technical. While I was able to learn many things, there's only so much time in the day. So often I'd leave a project with the idea of "I know this could be done... somehow." Now, those things are simply possible.
I know many of us in education have reservations about AI - and rightfully so, but when used as a creative tool, it levels the playing field unlike anything has before. I've long felt my lessons were at least as good at those found in the multi-thousand dollar curricula from the big publishers. I couldn't compete with their ability to pay artists, coders and researchers however. Now, I can.
I would honestly put Might or Mandate up against any educational game or activity from any publisher or designer. That's what a decade of plussing, some new technology, and awesome colleagues who keep pushing each other, can do for you!
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