Evaluation: War Lords of Japan Spreadsheet

The War Lords of Japan (5th grade) project's objective is to have students be able to:
 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the geography and natural phenomena of Japan and the development of the Shinto religion through table and graph interpretation, activities, and projects.
2.  Access prior knowledge to understand the unpredictability of Japanese weather and geology in order to realize how important it was for the early people of Japan to try to find a way to control forces of nature.
3.  Use the knowledge gained from this lesson to perform satisfactorily on the Japanese Religion Quiz in order to help his/her group obtain moves, koku (wealth), and armies in the War Lords of Japan simulation.\


The Technology objectives of this project are:
1. Students will use Excel’s table and graphing features to show relationships between the natural phenomena of Japan and its earliest religion.
2.  Students will use a teacher created accounting sheet to enter assignment results to determine moves, koku (wealth), and armies in the War Lords of Japan simulation.
3.  Students will be able to instantly view their castle team standings on an Excel chart after completely entering data on the accounting sheets.  They can also view graphs that compare each castle team’s strengths and weaknesses.


Basically, this project is a game to help students understand Japanese military strategy, how it affects villagers, the dispersion of wealth throughout the country, and also the importance of Japanese weather/geography in the development of the Shinto religion.


To adapt this project for an older group of students, I would have them create the accounting sheets, which keep track of the students' group standings war lords game themselves; in this version, the teacher creates it for the students. The graphs and information in the spreadsheets can be created by the students as well, which would give them practice using the application.
Overall, the game suits Sociology quite well; it explains multiple aspects of Japanese culture and war, all in a fun game that the students learn all different kinds of lessons from technology applications, to Japanese religion, culture, and history.