Brady: Today I’m here with Ms. Heller and she’s answering a few of my questions about SimCity in social studies, was it beneficial. My first question is, as a teacher, have you seen evidence of learning coming from SimCity?

Ms. Heller: That’s a really good question Brady, I think the short answer is yes.

Brady: How?

Ms. Heller: Well, I have the students fill out the SimCity tracker which has them identify challenges and decisions that they are facing and decisions that they've had to make, and then how they go about solving that, what decision they make and the impact it has on their citizens. And I think there is evidence of learning there when, for example, students build a power plant because it’s cheaper, and then they realize nobody wants to live next to it, and the citizens are getting grumpy, and then they decide that maybe next time they have to invest in wind energy sources, for example. That may be an example of the students using the game to realize the benefits of renewable energy sources.

Brady: Do you feel like SimCity can accurately portray a sustainable city? 

Ms. Heller: That’s a really good question, I think SimCity does a better job of giving students an idea of the complexity of building a city, and keeping people happy. Building a sustainable city adds another level of complexity that I don’t think SimCity is designed to achieve.

Brady: Overall do you think it was beneficial for social studies classes to be playing this, or do you think it was just something fun to be doing?

Ms. Heller: I don’t think those two are mutually exclusive, which means that they both happen at the same time. It could be fun and helpful. I think it had students think about what the position of mayor involves without me having to stand up in front of a class and show everyone a powerpoint. So I think in some situations, starting a new unit with a problem-based game where students just have to figure it out first is an effective strategy to get thinking about a topic.

Brady: My last question is, do you think there were any problems that came with playing SimCity?

Ms. Heller: Well, probably. For example, some people probably played it too much…

I think also, some people focused on building a big city instead of building a happy city. But that’s also normal in real life too. There are a lot of mayors that are doing that in real life. And I think because this is the first unit we’ve done this, we’ll learn more as the unit comes to a close, how much the students really benefited from it, and whether we should do it again next year, that’s something we have to decide about as the unit comes to a close.