Manual for Teachers
Introduction
The EnerCities educational package offers your school the possibility to use a serious game (learning
game) with related educational tools and community facility in and around lessons to discuss energy in
our society, energy savings and renewable / “green” energy challenges.
This teacher manual gives you the basics how to use the game in your school. It addresses:
1. EnerCities teacher code
2. EnerCities community facility usage
3. EnerCities questionnaire for students
4. EnerCities game explanations
5. EnerCities toolkit
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EnerCities teacher code
The usage of the EnerCities game in and around the classroom can be optimized when teachers and
students use a specific EnerCities teacher code. This unique code offers a teacher the possibility to
create a pool of students within the EnerCities game. A pool could be a class of 20-30 students.
Students within a pool can easily see or track down each others high scores and the teachers has
functionality to track the game results of its pool students.
I am a teacher. How do I get a teacher code?
First of all, you need to register yourself as a user on the EnerCities website. This will lead to your
personal EnerCities User Name. Next, you should send an email to the EnerCities contact person of
your language area. This person (with email address) is mentioned in the Memorandum of Agreement
between your school and EnerCities. If you or your school do / does not have a Memorandum of
Agreement, please send an email to: [email protected]. Mention in the email (to the EnerCities
contact person) the following:
-
Name of the school
-
EnerCities User Name of the teacher(s)
Based on this information, you will receive from the EnerCities team a unique teacher code per email.
Example of a teacher code: ROC01
What do I do with the teacher code?
When your students register themselves for EnerCities, you ask them to enter your teacher code
during that registration process. Already registered students can enter your teacher code in their
existing profiles. In this way you build up your pool of students.
What is next?
You and your students are now registered as a pool of EnerCities users. In this way high scores of the
students can be compared more easily, which stimulates the competition among your students and the
usage of the game by your students. This gives also the students an elegant motivation to do their
best and try to reach the high scores.
EnerCities community platform
The EnerCities community platform is available online for teachers, students and other registered
EnerCities users. Although EnerCities is a nice game to play, it would be nice to have online
discussions about the role of energy in our society; implications of changing the production and usage
of energy in our society; opportunities for energy saving and “green” energy. The EnerCities
community platform can be used for these online discussions. Additionally, game-players can use the
platform to exchange their game-experiences and tips & tricks. How to reach high scores? When to
use a certain energy source in the game to boost your points?
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Stimulate your students to use the platform!
As a teacher you are able to stimulate your students to use the platform for discussions and
information exchange. Also, as a teacher you could have the role in initiating and/or moderating
discussions to activate and guide your students’ discussions. In this way the platform can be seen as
an interesting interactive learning environment.
Also discussions in English? Why?
Several languages are supported in the EnerCities package. In order to stimulate cross-country
learning about energy, it is nice when students and teachers also join the forum with English
discussions and topics. In this way students, teachers and other EnerCities users learn about the
different perspectives on energy challenges and gaming in the classroom in the involved countries
and/or involved schools.
Perfect English language skills are not needed to join. Sharp or interesting views and some degree of
courage are the basic ingredients for your students to join the international forum.
Exchange your experiences as a teacher
EnerCities should also be a project for learning how to reach students (youngsters) on energy topics
via the EnerCities game, the related educational tools and your involvement as teacher.
Please, share your vision and experiences how to optimize the EnerCities package. Examples. What
is the best approach to create a lesson around or with the EnerCities packages (% pre-lesson
preparation by the students; % teacher instruction during the lessons; % gaming in the classroom; %
reflection on classroom level)? How to improve the game so that it is attractive and still a valuable
learning instrument? How to stimulate your colleague teachers (in your school and outside) to
experiment with the EnerCities package?
The teacher environment on the EnerCities commuity platform is available for you to discuss didactic
experiences and suggestions for improvement.
EnerCities questionnaire for students
EnerCities would like to stimulate the awareness of students (youngsters) regarding energy, energy
saving and “green” energy. In order to measure an awareness shift of the students who experienced
the EnerCities game via your lessons, we would like to ask your students (“experimental group”) to fill
in an online questionnaire multiple times:
1. Before the students will experience the EnerCities game (“zero measurement”)
2. After the students played the game via your lessons or due to your lessons. We would like to use
one or two moments in time to ask your students to fill-in the questionnaire again.
To measure the impact of EnerCities more precise, we also seek students who will not be informed
about EnerCities and will not experience the EnerCities game via your school or via another school (in
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your city / region). This is the so-called “control group”. We could like to use your help to reach this
“control group” in your school or in another school in your city or region.
1.
“Experimental group”
“Control group”
Students (from your school)
Students (from your school or
who will experience EnerCities
another school in your city or region)
via or due to your lessons
who will NOT experience EnerCities
Questionnaire for “zero
measurement”
2.
1. Questionnaire
Questionnaire after students
experienced EnerCities (one or two
2. Questionnaire after some time
moment in time)
Where can I find the online questionnaire?
This experimental group questionnaire can be found here:
http://www.energyquestionnaire.eu
The control group questionnaire can also be found here:
http://www.energyquestionnaire.eu
Based on checks the distinction will be made between a respondent from the experimental group or
the control group.
How should students fill-in the questionnaire?
The online questionnaire can be filled-in via any computer with an internet connection and an internet
browser. Most questions are multiple-choice questions. Via a mouse click, the students can fill these
questions. Some questions are open questions.
The questionnaire answers are processed anonymously. Nevertheless, we ask the students some
specific information. Examples: name of the school; User Name if the student has already an
EnerCities account. This information will be used anonymously for some advanced measurements in
order relate the game scores of a student with his/hers answers in the questionnaire.
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EnerCities game explanations
The EnerCities game is a mixture between a simple brower game and a strategic PC-game like
SimCity. The average playtime will be 45 – 60 minutes.
Why do we need to play the game online via a brower?
EnerCities would like to reach many schools and students. Since internet is used in almost every
schools today in Europe, it is very easily to offer a serious game like EnerCities via the internet. This
saves the school computer game installation and maintenance activities. And we can monitor the
usage of the game easily and fix problems online.
Why does our school need to install the so-called Unity 3D browser software?
EnerCities would like to use state-of-art browser software to make the EnerCities experience stronger
than an ordinary browser game (so-called flash game) and to create a game platform that will still be
attractive for students for the coming years. The browser software Unity 3D offers possibilities to make
the EnerCities game more attractive and more interactive for players like your students.
How to start playing the game?
You start the game by clicking on “Play Game” in the main menu of the EnerCities website. Next, you
will see some menu options. One of the menu options gives detailed explanations about the game:
goal and game-play options. These explanations will help you and your students start playing the
game, move to the next game levels and balance between economy, energy, environment and well
being in the EnerCities city.
EnerCities educational toolkit
The EnerCities educational toolkit gives you – as a teacher – background information about energy in
our society and the challenges regarding energy saving and “green” energy.
We do not offer you a ready-to-play lesson package, since every school, every school department and
every teacher has its own professional view how prepare and offer lessons and classes on topics like
energy, energy saving and “green” energy.
This EnerCities educational toolkit is online available on the EnerCities website in your language.
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