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Building Net Toys for Democracy
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Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 09:20:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Nathan Newman
THE BUDGET PROJECT: INTERNET TOYS FOR DEMOCRACY
Two years ago, the Center for Community Economic Research produced a simple web game, the National Budget Simulation, that let Americans explore some of the complexities of balancing the Federal budget. The result was a smash hit. NBS was used in classrooms throughout the country, and it was cited by The New York Times, Business Week, and C-SPAN. Today, in conjunction with Progressive Communications, we are embarking on a new adventure, and we need your help.
Today, we are launching a new initiative: Internet Toys for Democracy (ITD). The goal of ITD is to create a library of reusable Java tools to help educate the public about economic issues. Using these tools, teachers, policy makers, and members of community groups, businesses, unions, and political parties will be able to easily create interactive teaching "toys" without having to know how to program.
ITD's first project will be an expanded version of the National Budget Simulation. We would like to rewrite the original game, using Java, so that anyone can create their own budget simulation. Local and state governments will be able to create simulations to help their citizens understand where their tax dollars go, and educators will be able to use it for teaching. It will be designed so that it is simple to use and is a powerful teaching tool. Our goal is to get as much input from teachers, community educators, and others who have on-the-ground experience trying to explain complex economic issues to ordinary people. It will also be built so that people can also add options to suit their needs. In doing so, we hope to build a useful tool and to show that the Internet can live up to its potential as a means for educating the public.
The project will be broken into three phases. In Phase I, someone will write a quick-and-dirty general version that people throughout the country can experiment with. We'll set up a mailing list to get feedback on this version, to coordinate its use, and to discuss what features we should include in the next version. In Phase II, someone will rewrite the program so it gradually includes new features. In Phase III, we will discuss which other simple Java applets for teaching economic issues are worth tackling next.
We don't have any funding for this project. If it's going to happen, it will take lots of volunteers:
PROGRAMMERS: Right away, we need a skilled hacker to whip up a simple, stripped-down version of the Budget Game in Java. For someone who's a whiz at object-oriented programming and Java, this shouldn't take more than a few days tops plus an occasional bug fix, since the program is essentially a very simple spreadsheet. We also need someone for Phase II who's very skilled at object-oriented programming and who knows how to write clean, clear code that will fit JavaBeans and other emerging Java standards. This second project requires a larger commitment of time and may involve more than one person. If you're available for a quick-and-dirty job but not sure about a longer-term commitment, we're happy to take you (we assume that the first version is a prototype that we'll throw away).
HOSTS: Although we can keep a copy of the Budget Game on CCER's web site, we'll need more than one site to make this work. We're looking for people who can host mirror copies on their web site. We are also looking for people to help handle some of the administrative tasks, such as keeping up-to-date web pages that list the hosts and lesson plans, perhaps help in handling the volume of email the project generates, and other administrative issues.
EDUCATORS: As soon as we have a quick-and-dirty version up and running, we'll need help from classroom teachers and community educators. We'll need people to design lesson plans, write better instructions, and to come up with and kibbitz over a list of new features for the next version. The shape of the next version, Phase II, will largely be determined by educators who have lots of practical experience explaining complex economic issues in simple terms. We will try to steer clear of adding too many bells and whistles and keep our eye on the prize: getting across the lessons we hope to teach (and we assume the Budget Game will be used to teach many different kinds of lessons from a wide range of political perspectives).
BUDGET BUILDERS: As soon as a quick-and-dirty version is ready, we'll need several government employees and educators to try building budgets. For the first version, we're looking for people who feel comfortable with computers, since you'll have to enter the budget as a text file (in the second version, you'll enter it via an easy-to-use Java applet).
Interested? Send email to budgetgame@garnet.berkeley.edu. In the subject line, put the words BUDGET GAME and the category you want to volunteer (e.g., "BUDGET GAME PROGRAMMER").
You can also subscribe to our moderated mailing list, EDINLIST, where we'll send updates on our progress and, eventually, where we will kibbitz about the proposed changes. To subscribe, send the following message to
LISTSERV@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU:
SUB EDINLIST [FirstName] [LastName]
and then follow the instructions it sends back.
Thanks For Your Help!
Anders Schneiderman, PhD. Nathan Newman
P.S. If you have ideas about other Internet Toys for Democracy, and you're either a classroom teacher or a member of a large organization or magazine, please email us your idea; send email to budgetgame@garnet.berkeley.edu with a subject of "WISH LIST". At this point, we are only interested in people who have the organizational capacity to make a commitment that the new Toy will actually be used. ```
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