Ever thought of doing a non-virtual sim of the world, a mini Planet Earth, in a football stadium? Prof. Michael Wesch did. It’s his Anthropology 204 class at Kansas State University, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Actually, his class’s World Sim is in a giant rodeo arena, not a football stadium. It’s designed “to push students to stop asking, ‘What’s going to be on the test?’ and to contemplate bigger questions: Why are some people poor and some rich? How does the world work?… to create an environment where students can expand their capacity for empathizing with and loving those who are different from them.” The sim’s also a big mashup of virtual and real-world spaces and tools (wiki, digital video, big arena, people), with student collaboration and decisionmaking (40% of the sim’s rules get jettisoned at the end of each course to make room for the next class’s rules development) – also a simulation of how young people use social media and mash it all up with the rest of their lives. Do not miss another class of Wesch’s on the anthropology of YouTube (see “Watch this video, parents”).
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