Simulation Game Final Event on 30.11.2022
Finally, on November 30, 2022, everyone met at an international online event to present the most successful videos that the students had created in German as part of the project. The students themselves selected their favorites from 47 videos submitted. Students from the following schools created their favorite videos:
It’s getting warmer every year. As we humans make ever more use of fossil fuels, cut down forests and practise intensive agriculture, we are changing the climate: more heat waves and droughts, melting glaciers, rising sea levels.
Participants in the “Climate Neutral City” simulation game slip into the role of mayor, a member of “Fridays for Future” or head of the tourism office of the invented city Fonta for the duration of the game. Invited by the mayor representatives of different interest groups gather at a “Round table” in order to negotiate and decide about possible measurements on how to reduce the city’s CO2 emissions by half by 2030, based on a fixed budget. It aims to become “climate neutral” and no longer emit any CO2, thus helping stop global warming. To reach this goal, the players must decide on the steps to take and ultimately achieve a result by working together.
At the end of the simulation game, the commission will present the result and record the presentation in a three-minute video.
The simulation game is played on a PC or tablet using browser-based software. The participants will discuss and negotiate face to face while playing.
It makes sense to implement the simulation game as part of a project day or project week.
From all the videos submitted, the participants of the simulation game chose their own favourites. For India, the following video from Delhi Public School, Sec-45, Gurgaon was selected. Congratulations!
To all videos from India
A simulation game is an exciting didactic teaching and learning format. It facilitates experiential learning, which is considered particularly lasting – and it’s also fun. The core of a simulation game is a real or fictitious challenge. Participants examine key topic-related questions from different perspectives and learn both how difficult and how important it is to take different interests into account and work out compromises. As the outcome of the game is not predetermined, participants can look for different solutions, while putting their negotiation skills to the test and making decisions. They thus experience and shape challenges rather than merely talk about them.
The pilot simulation game "Climate Neutral City" (still as a competition) was great fun for both students and teachers. 15 schools from 5 countries with a total of 213 students between the ages of 14 and 18 who speak German at level A1-A2 took part.
All teachers and on average 89% of the pupils would take part in a simulation game again.
For 77% of the students, the project had a positive effect on their motivation to learn German. They could imagine improving their knowledge of German in such a way that they could take part in a simulation game in German. The videos created at the end of the simulation game, in which they present the result of the round table discussion, document their enthusiasm.
