Gerald Huesken, a teacher at Elizabethtown High School, is using a game called Fantasy Geopolitics to engage students in current events in their world history class. In Fantasy Geopolitics, students draft countries to assemble fantasy teams and earn points based on how frequently their countries appear in the news. This sparks discussion as students follow headlines to gain points. The game is helping students who may not usually be interested in news that does not directly affect them to learn more about global events.

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Fantasy football meets social
studies in Elizabethtown
classroom
Posted: Sunday, October 5, 2014 6:00 am | Updated: 12:21
pm, Mon Oct 13, 2014.
By KARA NEWHOUSE | Staff Writer
Djibouti doesn't make the news much,
and that's a problem for Madeline
Zabodyn.
She chose the small African nation for her
Fantasy Geopolitics team in world history class.
Every time her countries appear in the New
York Times, the Elizabethtown High School
junior wins points. So far, Djibouti has earned
her two.
A classmate who drafted Iraq and Syria got 526
points in one week alone.
Fantasy Geopolitics is a game that blends
fantasy football concepts with social studies
class.
Zabodyn's teacher, Gerald Huesken, Jr., is
using it this semester to spark students'
interest in current events.
Scores are mostly based on countries'
frequency in the news each week, putting teens
who follow the latest headlines at an advantage
to assemble high-scoring teams.
A Minnesota teacher created Fantasy
Geopolitics six years ago. After successful
crowdfunding last year, he launched a web
platform for other educators to join the game.
In Huesken's class, students check their scores every Monday. Besides overall rankings, they
monitor how they stack up against other teams in divisions that Huesken created as a twist on
the site's features.
Students also vote for classmates to win weekly awards like "biggest blowout" and "team to
Previous Next
Kara Newhouse
Madeline Zabodyn and Brian Soutner check their fantasy
geopolitics scores in history class at Elizabethtown High School.
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2. watch out for next week."
Browsing to FantasyGeopolitics.com on her phone in class one week, Zabodyn resigns herself to
weak odds.
"I don't think anybody will really want to trade countries with me," she says.
That's when classmate Alyssa Zook chimes in: "You don't have to trade. You can choose
countries that are (free agents). That's what I did. ... Canada's been getting me points."
What's our neighbor to the north trending for?
Zook's uncertain, but Brian Soutner knows.
"Toronto Mayor Rob Ford — he's moving out of office and his brother's (running for) his spot,"
he says.
"And Rob Ford was a really controversial character, because he did crack."
That kind of conversation is what Huesken hoped for when jumping into Fantasy Geopolitics.
A self-described news junkie, Huesken's chalkboard is decked out with Time magazine covers.
When it comes to students and current events, though, he often hits "this wall where kids are
not all that engaged with ... anything that doesn't directly affect them."
Huesken admits that some students "probably think it's lame," but says he's already seeing
glimmers of success with Fantasy Geopolitics.
Like last month, when one student was pushing for a trade to get Scotland ahead of its
independence vote. Or the girl who picked Iraq and Syria.
"I don't know how she got that so quickly. She must have done a great draft strategy," he says.
Education technology enthusiasts refer to platforms like Fantasy Geopolitics as "gamification of
learning." In games, experts say, kids can learn a lot from their willingness to try, fail and keep
trying.
For Eric Nelson, who created Fantasy Geopolitics, that realization came from joining a fantasy
football league with friends.
"At first I thought it was a waste of time, but it was fun and addictive ... I realized how much
research I was doing and how much I was learning about football."
He applied the principles to a game for his freshman civics class, calculating the scores
manually.
Last year, he worked with developers to create a web platform that draws data from the New
York Times, as well as a database that tracks the tone of news coverage. Students can lose points
for negative events in their countries.
Nelson's game, which is free to classrooms, already has more than 15,000 users in six countries.
Still a classroom teacher, Nelson is exploring partnerships to expand his fantasy learning
platform — possibly to other subjects.
Huesken, too, is already scheming ways to improve Fantasy Geopolitics for his Elizabethtown
classes, like adding in wild card matches and a more festive draft day.
"I want to amp up the excitement," he says.
"A lot of it is me just being reflective of how I rolled it out to the kids."
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3. In that way, adults may have as much to learn from games as kids do.
Kara Newhouse is a Lancaster Newspapers staff writer who covers K-12 education
trends and policies. She can be reached at knewhouse@lnpnews.com or (717)
481-6013. You can also follow @KaraNewhouse on Twitter.
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Posted in Local, News on Sunday, October 5, 2014 6:00 am. Updated: 12:21 pm. | Tags: Fantasy Geopolitics,
Fantasy Football, Elizabethtown High School, Gerald Huesken, Jr.
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Reply · Like · Follow Post · October 5 at 4:01pm
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