Launched in October 2006, Ayiti: The Cost of Life is an online game which exposes players to impoverished conditions in Haiti as part of an effort to educate them about the obstacles to education and economic stability faced by children in developing countries. The role-playing video game, which is meant to be both entertaining and educational, was designed by a team of youth leaders from a high school in Brooklyn, New York, USA who are part of the. They linked up with professionals from the game design studio to create the game, which - when used within either a classroom or after-school setting - is envisioned as a tool for building the global awareness and civic literacy of students around the world.
Use a free online game to explore economics in contemporary Haiti. Learn how poverty is an obstacle and how you can advocate to increase access to education for all.
This initiative draws on information and communication technology (ICT) to educate youth about poverty as an obstacle to education through what is intended to be an engaging, realistic, experience. It was developed by youth, for youth; P4P participants were inspired to create an online game focused on these issues based on their learning about the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and about obstacles to receiving an adequate education that youth face around the world.
They then decided to use Haiti as a case study and setting for the game.Specifically, Ayiti: The Cost of Life involves the player assuming the roles of family members living in rural Haiti. Over the course of the game, the player must choose among and balance various goals, such as achieving education, making money, staying healthy, and maintaining happiness while encountering unexpected events. The player must make many decisions that contribute to or detract from achieving his or her chosen goals. Players have the responsibility of guiding the family through 16 seasons (4 years) of working, building the community, and going to school. ( to access Ayiti: The Cost of Life and various weblogs/links with further information about it.)The game is designed as a learning tool that educators and youth workers can use in their classrooms. Global Kids developed 2 workshops with supporting materials for teachers and facilitators around the game; these materials offer a number of actions for young people who want to make a difference in the real world around poverty.
Specifically, the first workshop and lesson plan is designed as a tool for helping youth process their experience after playing the game. How to delete wunderlist account. The second workshop and accompanying lesson plan can be conducted either before playing the game, as a way to introduce students to the game's issues, or after playing the game, as a way to help them better understand the links between poverty and access to education. (In this endeavour, TakingITGlobal partnered with Global Kids to offer Ayiti on TIGed, a thematic classroom that connects the Ayiti game to a virtual classroom toolset, allowing educators to guide their students through an interactive learning experience that includes Ayiti gameplay. To access the teaching materials.). P4K is a youth media project involving 24 students from South Shore High School, a largely minority school of approximately 2,300 students located in Canarsie, Brooklyn, in working with professional game developers in the design, development and dissemination of professionally-produced online games about various social issues. During the school year, programme participants conducted research about global issues and gained digital literacy, leadership, and career skills.
Students participated in workshops on such issues as children's rights, racism, health, and education, and then selected an issue on which to focus the game. With professionals from Gamelab, they learned about a range of issues related to game design as a form of critical media literacy as well as the game industry and the game development process. The students also took numerous field trips and have spoken about their work at various conferences. Participants have documented the process of creating the game in a blog ( to view it).One young player has written that Ayiti: The Cost of Life made her 'think about consequences that a real family in Haiti would face without being preachy. There isn't a clear strategy to win this game, either. At the beginning, it gives you a choice of four strategies you can follow. However, if you play this game more than once you will see that it doesn't matter which strategy you pick - getting ahead is difficult.just like real life.'
In my spare time I like to play-test online games and feel them out for classroom use. I’ve been working through quite a few of games about poverty and hunger and plan to share my thoughts on them here., is one that we have previously on the blog.
You play as a family of five in Haiti and make decisions about how each family member should spend their time each season–working, getting an education, or resting. Each member has stats on their health, happiness, and education that you have to monitor, and your success is measured by the number of diplomas you earn over the 16 turns of the game. I’ve played this game maybe 6 or 7 times now and its pretty fun.
Ayiti The Cost Of Life 2
At the start of the game you choose a focus–happiness, money, health, or education–and it seems like the decision does matter. The one time I chose health, almost my entire family died of cholera or tuberculosis, and I found there was little I could do to stop it. Education works out the best in my experience, which is unsurprising given the goal of the game.
The Game Of Life Cost
Even with that as a choice, it’s difficult to get everybody in the family an adequate education, as health issues can be quite difficult to manage. I’ve found that ‘education’ is the go-to answer for a lot of my students as a way of fixing issues of poverty and human rights, and this game may help them see why its not such an easy answer. As an assignment then, this game can be quite effective as its pretty easy to learn and illustrates a number of challenges with getting out of the poverty cycle. Its also pretty fun and has high re-playability.
It would work best either as a homework assignment with questions to answer, maybe linked to a good reading, or as an in-class activity in a computer lab accompanied with a discussion afterwards.Fun: 3/4 Although the subject matter keeps it from being completely fun, it is an enjoyable game experience.Ease of Use: 3/4 Its fairly intuitive but does take a while to learn how to move your family members from place to place and to understand all the options.Polisci Class Application: 3/4 Definitely a good game for understanding the connections between education, poverty, and health.