Table of Contents
Impact Game on Kickstarter – Help us support Idea Couture.
A New Game for School Kids – Teach foresight today in any secondary school classroom.
New Web Site, New Workshops, A New Foresight Program – Don't miss out.
Big Impact for giving to this Kickstarter if you can act TODAY.
Idea Couture, a design consultancy in Toronto, is completing a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of a new game they have developed called IMPACT, a foresight board game that teaches players to think critically and imaginatively about emerging technology and the future of society.
The campaign has already reached its goal but continues until Sat, Oct 1. So there is still time to participate. What is more, Idea Couture has pledged to donate five board games to Teach the Future for every extra $1,000 they receive. Teach the Future will distribute these games free of charge to teachers who are teaching the future.
So go to Kickstarter and enter your pledge. And tell your friends and colleagues that they can support Teach the Future and the teachers and students who will receive these game by entering their pledge as well.
IMAGINE: a foresight game for secondary school students
Based on her work with students this summer, Katie King has developed her own game called IMAGINE. Thinking about the future is actually not that hard for students, but doing it well requires some structure and some practice. IMAGINE provides the structure. The result is a mini-scenario, a short description of an alternative future that foresight educators call the kernel, the logic or the pitch. Students begin by reviewing or finding major trends in the world. Then they brainstorm the consequences of one of those trends using a futures wheel. The results of all that work goes into a Mad Lib-style worksheet where the last section is the scenario. Teachers call this approach scaffolding, providing the pathway or the scaffold to achieve a given result. Scaffolding is extremely important for students to learn the skills associated with foresight, not just ideas about the future.
The game was introduced to the futures community at a demonstration in the 12-hour online Futures Festival sponsored by the Association of Professional Futurists on Friday, Sept 16. Teach the Future Board member Chris Bishop briefed the participants on Teach the Future, and Katie led them in a quick version of the game.
Katie also conducted an after-school workshop for 50 students at Travis High School in Richmond TX, a city outside Houston, last week. The workshop was the first use of the game in a real educational environment. Students got the point that multiple explanations and consequences of change (scenarios) are usually better than arguing about which explanation or scenario is the ‘right’ one. One student said, “We should think about possible futures because we are the next leaders of the future. We need to know the possibilities of what could happen.”
More details of the game are available on our Blog.
See our New Web Site at www.TeachTheFuture.Org
You will notice a big change when you click on the Teach the Future website. The previous site supported our fund raising campaign last year very well, but it was not as informative as it could be. So Katie King took the initiative to create a site that tells our story in a simpler, more straightforward way. All the same features are there: a video explaining how we teach the future, starter kits and lessons and activities in the Teach the Future Library, blogs and the chance to subscribe to our newsletter. So check it out!
Workshops, workshops
Katie King has been busy this summer. Last year, she and Peter Bishop conducted a futures workshop for high school students at the World Future Society meeting in San Francisco last year. This year Katie has developed and conducted three high school workshops. The first was in Pittsburgh for Youth Leading Change during a week-long event called Remake Learning.
The second was a 10-day workshop in Emeryville CA sponsored by Institute for STEM Education, an office of California State University-East Bay. Katie led students through an extensive exercise to develop a future scenario in the first half of the workshop. Then students turned their scenarios into a video game with the help of Jateen Bhakta, a local game developer.
You can find more details about each of these workshops on our Blog.
San Diego City College associates the future
After many years of tirelessly working with the California Postsecondary Education Commission, Jelena Cingel Bodinet has finally received permission to offer an Associate’s degree in Futures Studies at San Diego City College. This degree is the first Associate’s degree in foresight and futures studies that we know of. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a trend. Congratulations, Jelena!
Up and coming
Nov 13-16, Global Education Conference
iEARN promotes global education by connecting students and teachers from different countries on joint projects. They also sponsor the Global Education Conference, a week-long online event running 24/7 around the world. Teach the Future will present our work on Mon, Nov 16 at 10 am Central Time (1600 GMT). Appearing on the panel will be Peter Bishop, Executive Director; Erica Bol, Director of Teach the Future EU; Katie King, Curator of the Teach the Future Library, and Samantha Cocco-Klein from the UNCIEF Policy Planning Unit. UNICEF is developing a handbook of resources for teachers to use in teaching the future, and Teach the Future has been consulting with them in its development.
Dec 2-4, National Council on the Social Sciences
Joe Sears is a high school teacher at Emery High School in Houston. He developed the unit called “The Next Chapter in World History” for the Library. The unit has students imagine an historical event that occurs between 2015 and 2045 that is written up in a history book in 2115. Joe appeared on the AHA panel in Atlanta in January, and he has had a paper on teaching the future accepted by the National Council on the Social Sciences (NCSS) for their annual meeting.
Until next time
So stay in touch, and join the conversation on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media platforms. And contact us through the website or directly to peter@teachthefuture.org...
Copyright © 2016 Teach the Future, All rights reserved.