SimCity Goals and Strategies Slide Presentation Deliverable

All of the Deliverables for the Future City Competition

SimCity 2013 software teaches the Engineering Design Process during gameplay.  Players create a city by drawing many large roads and installing expensive utilities and city services.  The city goes bankrupt (Well, Detroit went bankrupt so it's not an unknown idea.) Player starts a new city having learned the lesson about spending too much money before getting a Town Hall and collecting taxes.

SimCity teaches environmental sustainability.  Players put their sewage outflow pipe right next to their city water tower.  Or they build their residential area right next to their industrial area.  Or they use coal or oil burning power plants. Or...or... or... many other situations..

SimCity teaches the inestimable value of good education systems.  Sims get sick, start fires, commit crimes, refuse to recycle, and do many other things because they are not educated. One of the funniest experiences students have is when they proudly fund a nuclear power plant before their Sims have reached an appropriate educational level.

SimCity teaches fiscal responsibility.  Nothing like high taxes to make your Sims move out of your city.  

SimCity teaches city finance. The game includes bonds that are automatically repaid, over time, with interest.

SimCity teaches city infrastructure and city services, along with road volume, streets that cut down on traffic jams, what kinds of things raise property value.

In the Future City curriculum, SimCity is used to teach setting goals and strategies for reaching goals.  This may not be the best use of the gameplay, but it is a worthy use.

City Essay

Each year the topic of the competition changes.  Several years ago it was transportation, then urban agriculture.  This year it was "The Power of Public Spaces."  In your City Essay, you must describe your future city (100 years in the future) in 1500 words or less.  There is a detailed rubric - that teaches middle school students how to use a rubric - to guide your writing.  In this essay, students talk about all of the city-structure-things they learned about while playing SimCity such as intrastructure and city services.  

This essay includes a paragraph about how different types of engineers designed and built the futuristic elements of your future city -- guaranteeing that students have learned about different engineering careers. 

There is a Project Management Plan form that is required. The form walks students through the process of planning the project long term and then checking-in to measure progress in weekly increments along the way.

City Model

Building the scale model of your futuristic city includes all of the things I love to do: planning, mapping, coloring, painting (especially spray painting!) hot-gluing, woodworking, and playing with battery-powered moving parts.  The model is large (50" by 25" with a 20" max height) so get ready to give up all of the counter space in your classroom.  The model should be all recycled materials (There is a $100 max budget and half of that can be taken up by your piece of 3/4" plywood.) 

Scale is a difficult concept in middle school so we do several lessons on that before we get to the building stage just so that students bring the right sized objects.  No matter how many times I tell them to not bring milk cartons and giant plastic water bottles, they do it anyway.  Check out our Facebook page for models from the last few competitions.  The good ones are immediately apparent....and made of many different shapes of small objects.

The City Model is assessed by engineer and/or architect judges on the day of the competition.  They should use the rubric to guide them as they plan and build their model.

For some of my student's planning maps, click here.

City Presentation

Students give a 7 minute presentation to a panel of engineer judges on the day of the competition.  Teams are typically 3 students so it's just a few minutes of speaking for each team member.  After the students give their presentation, judges get 7 minutes to ask them questions about their city, their learning process, engineering careers, etc.  Here are some practice questions to help your students get prepared for this part of the competition.

Again, this presentation is assessed with a rubric that the students have ahead of time so they know what is expected of them all along the way.

Special awards

On the day of the competition, students spend the entire day talking to engineers and demonstrating what they have learned over the last several months.  Special Award categories vary from region to region.  In the Southern California Region, we have special award categories that stay the same and we are always experimenting with new ones.  To prepare your students for these awards, check out our website.