Room With A View

Peacemaker is a simulation game where one plays either the leader of Israel or the leader of Palestine. I’ve been watching it’s development for several months and it’s now finished.

PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of winning the Nobel Prize or the agony of plunging the Middle East into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again.

It’s tough. I installed it on a desktop machine in my computer lab in hopes that I’d be able to review it–no way. Five minutes here and ten minutes there just didn’t work. It’s way too involved for that. Last week I bought a license for my personal MacBook so I could play it on the plane on the way to Thailand. Even so I’ve barely got started. It’s involved, there’s a lot to learn, and there’s no easy solution–pretty much a realistic simulation.

If you’re at ISB and you want to check it out, let me know. I’ll sort out a way for you to try it out. I’m dieing to see how we can use this with kids. Right now I think it has potential for high school social studies, Theory of Knowledge, and MUN classes. I look forward to hear what you think.

In keeping with my recent post about simulations, I’ve been looking at some simulation and game sites. The Nobel Prize Website has several educational games dealing with lasers, conductive polymers, international trade and more. I’ve only looked at a couple of the games but they look to be geared to upper elementary and middle school students.