o.s. Earth in the News
Excercise teaches global activity April 26, 2007. The Free Lance-Star
Global game puts world, its woes, in their hands January 21, 2005. The Star Ledger.
Global Simulation Workshop at Moravian Turns Students into Global Leaders for 3 Hours November 2004. Moravian College News Release.
Watkinson Students Get Real World Lessons February 14, 2004. The Hartford Courant
April 26, 2007
The Free Lance-Star
Excercise teaches global activity
Students play game on global scale
By Jenn Rowell
The Health group could make a profit by selling, the group from India negotiated.
But then the group from Latin America came over.
"So you need three and they need three, and we have five," Rebecca Rossmaier of the Health group said.
Similar exchanges went on for three hours yesterday morning in the flag-lined gym at Spotsylvania High. The activity was part of a global simulation for students in the AP Human Geography class at the Commonwealth Governor's School.
Students were assigned to groups representing regions, world organizations, corporations and the media.
Groups traded chips and cards for money and points. Each group collected specific cards, such as resource, technology, education, culture and people.
"It really shows the interactions between countries and organizations," Rossmaier, Stafford Senior High student, said. "You really understand how the world works and how when a news story comes out in one region, how it affects other regions and the stock market."
Three rounds of trading represented three decades. Between rounds, the media group provided a news report.
In the second news cycle, the group reported some corruption in the technology corporation, but refuted it in the third report. The student reporter also talked to president of India to find out how the group moved from Third World to superpower status.
"We did deals with several different corporations," Will Parker of India and North Stafford High said. "It's just the hard work of the Indian people."
At the close of trade, groups could do a cultural presentation to claim remaining chips from the Global Foundation, which operated in a fashion similar to the United Nations.
The group from China danced with a drawing of a dragon and paper fans, while the group from Russia wrote and sang a song, made a hat and danced. But the W.P. Matthews business corporation beat them out with a tune from Disney's "Little Mermaid" and improvised lyrics.
But the simulated world ended with a water shortage that killed 45 million people globally.
By the end, students discovered that the media group played a bigger part than anyone thought. The trio had acquired chips and bought stories and also helped certain groups advance.
"We wanted to make the point that the media does more than just report, but they have a global impact," Colonial Forge student Matthew Ryan said.
January 21, 2005
The Star Ledger
Global game puts world, its woes, in their hands
By Katie Wang
Keshav Poddar was a popular guy yesterday at the Newark Academy in Livingston.
Standing in the school gym, he was surrounded by a group of anxious classmates who wanted to win him over for the betterment of the world.
Their simulated world, that is.
Poddar, 12, was playing the role of a health official in a three-hour global simulation game at the school yesterday morning. The game split the 550 students into five parallel universes, which were further subdivided into regions of the world.
The regions included Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, China, India and North America.
The students were given the challenge of running their countries while dealing with issues such as health care, education, human rights and the environment. The students had to work to acquire those resources, symbolized by cards and pokerlike chips, by making trades and currying favors with officials such as Poddar.
As they collected the resources, their power increased and they moved up the ladder of global power. Some traded for long-term benefits for the masses, while others were more power and money hungry.
"We are dedicated to giving our students a global perspective, and we're trying to give them the concept of responsibility," said Penny Riegelman, head of the school.
The company behind the global simulation game, O.S. Earth, has also run the game at a host of colleges and universities and other public and private schools. The game costs between $2,800 to $8,000 depending on the number of participants.
Pegeen Galvin, dean of students, said the game is a good way to merge current events in the world into classroom instruction.
"The kids are talking about (the tsunami) and have we done enough and are we spending too much on the inauguration," said Galvin. "These questions are on their mind."
But it isn't easy running the world, as the Newark Academy students quickly learned.
The school gymnasium floor looked and sounded more like the trading floor on Wall Street, with students brokering trades and flinging cards about. Bells chimed repeatedly, signaling when another region had advanced up the so-called wealth meter measuring their success.
The game started out diplomatically for the most part, but the bargaining and jockeying turned more aggressive as the game came to an end.
Poddar and another teammate, Kyle Ostroff, 13, were especially tough when it came to doling out health care resources to different teams.
Tony Argibay, an eighth-grader, experienced this first hand. Argibay tried to bargain for a health card for his team, Japan, by offering two of his chips.
The offer was well short of the six-chip minimum.
"No!" screamed Poddar, turning Argibay away. "Because we're charging six chips for a health card."
This rankled Argibay, who decided to drop a few names of his allies.
"We've got China on our side," he shouted back. "We'll squish you like a bug. We're Japan!"
During breaks in the games, the different groups reported their progress. In most cases, North America, Europe and Japan were the power houses while Africa and the Middle East lagged.
Representatives from those regions complained that no one wanted to trade with them.
Nicole Friend, a sixth-grader from Summit and trade representative of Europe, said she planned to help Africa after she acquired enough money for Europe.
"We're going to try to help them once we accomplish our own achievements," she vowed.
But cards, chips and money aside, students said the game taught them valuable lessons about negotiation, interdependency and how the world works.
"It's the whole world trying to work together," said Rebecca Ellis, 12, of West Orange.
November 2004
Moravian College News Release
Global Simulation Workshop at Moravian Turns Students into Global Leaders for 3 Hours
Bethlehem, Pa., November 5, 2004 -- More than 200 Moravian students from 15 different classes recently learned what its like to run the world for an afternoon. The Leadership Center at Moravian College held a global simulation workshop run by o.s.Earth, Inc., titled How Would You Run the World?
The Global Simulation Workshop is an innovative 3-hour program that lets students become world leaders responsible for running the world. Divided into teams, players represent geopolitical regions (for example, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, South Asia); multinational conglomerates of corporations; and global organizations dedicated to special issues such as health, human rights, and the environment. Teams trade resources both concrete and abstract: wealth, technology, solutions, infrastructure, natural resources, and more.
In the process, the workshop builds leadership and teamwork skills and inspires students to explore the political, economic, and social challenges facing the world today. This educational experience is the direct descendant of the "World Game Workshop," which has been brought to over 2,000 schools in 35 countries.
"As part of our effort to increase students' understanding of leadership and awareness of global issues, we sponsored the workshop to provide students with a unique introduction to the way the world often operates," said Dr. Michelle Schmidt, co-director, The Leadership Center. “The workshop is a valuable learning tool that serves to supplement course content and challenge students to consider new perspectives on the social, economic, and political climates of countries around the world.”
Headquartered near Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, o.s.Earth, Inc. provides experiential, simulation-based learning and training about world resources and issues. Its flagship product is the Global Simulation Workshop. Developed over a 30 year period by the World Game Institute, an internationally recognized think tank and non-profit organization, the Global Simulation Workshop inspires its participants to explore the political, economic, and cultural challenges that face the world today.
February 14, 2004
The Hartford Courant
Watkinson Students Get Real World Lessons
By Melissa Pionzio
Courant Staff Writer
Watkinson School students took a day off from their regular classes Friday to learn more about the world in which they live through a fast-paced, interactive global simulation workshop.
Sponsored by New Haven-based O. S. Earth, the experience was meant to teach students first hand the importance of leadership, responsibility and teamwork. The private school, located in the city's Blue Hills neighborhood, enrolls students in grades 6 to 12.
"They so need a current understanding of the way the world works and our place in it," said Martin Estey, a Watkinson English teacher who was instrumental in bringing the simulation to the school. "We get so little international education."
As participants, students broke up into 20 teams. Ten represented regions of the world; four were multinational corporations; four represented non-governmental, human interest groups that focus on such subjects as human rights, health, environment and education; one represented the Global Foundation, which is like the United Nations, and the final team represented the media.
Greta Gao, the moderator for O. S. Earth, said the students begin with different levels of wealth based on the strength or the infrastructure of their country, company or organization. The levels of wealth are handed to each team in the form of cards and chips. They use the cards and chips to buy or trade resources to get what they need.
What they need may be food, education, information technology or other resources vital to their survival, she said.
"They go around and slowly discover what they need. They don't always know what they need right away," she said of the students as they visited tables representing the teams of countries, corporations or organizations. "They have to work with other team members to get what they need."
Each region had individual resource cards while corporate teams had technology solutions cards and human interest groups had solution strategy cards.
During the simulation, student corporations and organizations sold their cards to regions in exchange for the region's wealth (chips) or resources (cards). Representatives from O.S. Earth and Watkinson faculty members were on hand to answer questions.
"Each team has a binder that represents their infrastructure," Gao said. "They try to fill the binder with the cards they need to build their infrastructure."
Once the binder is filled, teams can move up a level, which raises their overall value and makes them more appealing to trade with.
"They are trying to get us to understand negotiation and communications with other people as well as understanding the business marketplace," said 14-year-old Jessica Inacio, a freshman from Hartford.
The school's gymnasium was buzzing with the activity of students wheeling and dealing for the resources they needed. Some were creating posters and artwork meant to represent their countries, which would later be sold or traded to other countries or organizations.
"It's pretty good," said Glastonbury resident Warren Perdrizet , a freshman who represented the Global Foundation. "It got hectic when people come up to the table to trade all at once. But after a while, it runs smoothly." David Bray, a sophomore from Marlborough, whose team represented Latin America, said the experience was more interesting than he had expected.
"We had to talk with other representatives from different countries to find out what was useful to them," said David, 16.
After the simulations, students participated in a model United Nations simulation and watched a series of consciousness-raising documentaries that dealt with environmental, economic and human rights and other issues. Discussion groups were formed so students could share thoughts on their experiences.
By working as teams, Estey said he hoped the students would begin to understand how helping others ultimately helps yourself or your team.
"Most of them seem to be engaged; that's all we can expect," he said. "We'll have to wait and see if they can make the connection in what's going on in the real world."
Eleven-year-old Brett Giacco, a sixth grader from Avon who represented Southeast Asia, sat on the gymnasium floor with a half-filled binder, waiting for team members to bring him the cards/resources they needed. His take on the experience was simple but clear. "You need to support your family and it's really hard," he said. "The world doesn't revolve around you; you need to support everybody else."
For information on the event, call O.S. Earth at 800-220-4263.