Multiple studies have documented the growing trend of apathy among young Americans toward world events. A National Geographic survey, for instance, found that only 37 percent of young people (18-24) could locate Iraq on a map; 48 percent think that Islam is the predominant religion in India (it’s Hinduism); and 20 percent place Sudan in Asia (it’s the largest country in Africa).
Throwing up his hands in frustration one day, Eric Nelson, a civics and history teacher at North Lakes Academy in the Minneapolis suburbs turned to his online fantasy football league for a distraction. Instead, what he found was inspiration. Realizing how much he was learning about the NFL in the process of managing his fantasy team, he thought: What if I applied the mechanisms and tools used in fantasy sports to world events? “The next day I went in and [the class] drafted countries,” he recalls, “and I scored them based on how many times they were mentioned in the news.” And thus Fantasy Geopolitics, an online tool to engage students in world events, was born.
Engadget
Forget football: How fantasy sports are helping kids learn
By Corinne Iozzio