| Many educators and student get involved with Fantasy Football leagues each year. Fantasy Football participants use statistics to help them choose their players to form the best Football team. So what does Fantasy Football have to do with school you may ask. Well, students in 8th grade are using a similar model of statistical analysis to choose their Fantasy | |
Geopolitical team, but students draft countries to form their team. Each country has its own rank that fluctuates from day to day based on data from the New York Times and the GDELT Project. Points are given for each article in the New York Times related to a country and based on the 'Goldstein Tone' generated from the GDELT Project.
Natural disasters, war, crime, politics, business, pop culture and more can affect how a country performs. Students are engaged in learning more about current worldwide news so they can choose the best team. They can check their score and other player's scores using the Rankings pages of the Fantasy Geopolitics site. Their teacher provides the opportunity to switch, trade or dump "players" if students feel their countries are not performing well. In order to make a change to their team, students must explain and justify to their teacher why they want to make the change. What a fun way to encourage students to stay current with world events!
Natural disasters, war, crime, politics, business, pop culture and more can affect how a country performs. Students are engaged in learning more about current worldwide news so they can choose the best team. They can check their score and other player's scores using the Rankings pages of the Fantasy Geopolitics site. Their teacher provides the opportunity to switch, trade or dump "players" if students feel their countries are not performing well. In order to make a change to their team, students must explain and justify to their teacher why they want to make the change. What a fun way to encourage students to stay current with world events!
