Learning Activities for Cosmology of Kyoto
After reviewing each software package, we asked the evaluators to design a learning
activity that uses Cosmology of Kyoto.
Learning Ideas by Mary Long
Objective:
- To demonstrate the importance of sharing information.
- To identify important and superfluous information.
- To identify
essential elements in the religious beliefs of Japan in the 8th
to 12th centuries.
Materials needed:
- Detailed directions for playing the game.
(Develop a card with essential directions. Make icons N, S,
E, W and place them on stickers on the monitor as they would
appear on a map.)
- CD of Cosmology of Kyoto
- Note pads of blank sheets
Directions for students who have been organized into teams:
Follow the directions and begin to play the game. After you
have wandered awhile, check your location and print a copy
of the map of the territory. Use the map to keep track of
your movements by placing numbers on the map and referencing
what happened on a piece of paper. You need not list all
information but only that which you believe will be important
to share with others on your team. You may want to note:
- What events happened in your game?
- Can you come to any conclusions about the world view you
experienced? Did any events concern the religious beliefs of
the time?
- Were there times when you checked the reference section? If so,
summarize your findings.
Save your game and return to it over the next week. Make copies
of your notes and pass them on to your teammates.
At the end of the week, meet with your teammates and prepare a
presentation on what you learned about the world in which the
game is set. What were their metaphysical and religious
beliefs?
Learning Ideas by Steve Meredith
In reviewing the game, I believe that we could use it in TCM 114
'Audio for TV and Video' as an example of sound effects and
music integration. It also made substantial use of MIDI for
music looping; this would be an interesting topic for our MTC
191, MTC 195 classes that use electronic music for part of the
curriculum. These latter classes would also be interested in
what it takes to create or design a CD-ROM and the music and
sound effects for them.
Learning Ideas by Tamaye Csyionie
This game, treating a period extending from the 8th to the 12th
century in Japanese history, seems to have a limited and
indirect usefulness to the group of students I teach. The
primary goal of my students is to acquire a certain level of
proficiency in modern Japanese language, yet the digitized sound
of this game copies the speech mannerism of the people who lived
during the Heian period. Its use, however would enhance the
students awareness of the differences between the Japanese
culture of the Heian Period and their own.
I would simply ask the class to play the simulation game for an
hour, followed by a discussion session encouraging each to
narrate her/his adventures as a Heian person and to describe
her/his own reactions as a late Twentieth-Century person.