From the get go, I wanted my REDI Lab project to be creating a better way to teach students in America about geography and the complex world we live in. Geography is one of my favorite subjects as I love traveling, exploring, and seeing how our divided world can connect physically. I also love Geopolitical Politics for many of the same reasons along with how trade policies can have a domino effect across the world. I want to create a better way to teach these topics because:
- understanding Geopolitics better helps us understand the world we live in and the lives of others
- I want to share a topic I love with others
- America specifically has an issue of not understanding the geography and politics outside of the USA.
Today Geopolitical Politics like it or not is becoming more and more of a looming problem that will affect our everyday lives. From everyone’s new favorite word “tariffs” or the trade wars going on across the pacific in Asia, Geo politics is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s world. Recently we’ve been learning more and more about how certain global trade and political moves are changing our lives here in America from increased price levels and greater scarcity of certain goods. However, we aren’t exactly seeing how these trade policies are affecting the rest of the world. This isn’t essentially our fault, however. You see, news outlets in the USA are American focused meaning they showcase the news happening in America and pinpoint only how geopolitical policies or disagreements affect Americans. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with news outlets showing how our lives in America are changing, but it rids the possibility for us to learn about how our policies affect the lives of others.
Consider Tariffs for example. We know how tariffs are changing prices for us but we aren’t seeing coverage of how tariffs are changing the economy’s of countries 
outside of the USA. As such Americans can’t and won’t understand how their political votes can affect the lives of billions across the world. With global insights on how trade policies affect the lives of others, Americans can have greater insight when making choices on trading policies as American trade affects the lives of everyone on earth. Well, we can’t change what articles the news focuses on, but we can change the way students learn.
Students don’t like learning about Geopolitical Politics mainly because they are learning the topic in one single way, long boring lectures. When learning about a topic, especially an interesting one like GeoPolitics, you want something engaging, colorful, interactive, not some boring lecture. Well when we think about global relationships there are many elements at play, accessibility to transport, cost and money, environments and goods, luck and strategy, it’s all kinda like one big complex game. This lead me to creating the Idea of a board game that uses trade policies and resource allegation to teach students a bit more about how trade political relationships affect countries with first hand experience. Here students play individual countries inspired by real world countries that have specific resources they produce and export. In this game the Teacher will play the role of the global superpower such as the USA who will initiate trade, development projects, and conflicts such as introducing tariffs in similar ways to how global superpowers influence trade.
The main goal for each country will be to improve their citizens standards of living such as water supply or government stability. Students in this game will be able to experience first hand how the policies of global superpowers impact their countries development and living standards. When a student’s country may experience tariffs for example and get to understand how those tariffs affect their country by just playing the game and seeing how their money or cost of goods changes. Students will be able to further understand the implementations of trade politics by experi it first hand in a mock game situation.
Learning about our world and geopolitics in this way turns learning into one big game, and I hope you are ready to play.