Well, I suppose I've said my thing and I'm not gonna repeat it...
As for his name, I get the feeling Blitzentoden is a place or title or something like that, dead would be toten if my German is any good, so it's at least not exactly your translation...

Hi Baron,

I've done this with my classes and it always turned out very well. I sent you a pm with a quick reflection on how I did it. Let me know via pm if I can help you with anything.

Tod is a noun, tot an adjective.

@steephie: It's actually just the name of an old RPG character. I don't actually remember what it was meant to translate to.

I'd reccommend doing an anon game if you can, just to avoid the aformentioned fights in the hallway after stabs.
That way even if the kids do talk about it outside of class, they still won't be completely sure if the person's telling the truth.

ulytau, Krieg is also a noun, yet it shows up in Blitzkrieg, which is literally translated as "lightning-war."

Your point being?

I'm a high school teacher and, in my opinion, there is NO WAY that I would attempt to do this. Once you get them on this site and anything goes wrong, you will have steered them to a site that has profanity laced throughout the forum. Once an administrator (of your school) gets involved and looks at the forum, you will have no way to defend yourself.

Why don't you do it FTF? Get a board and actually play the game. Make it a turn a day or something like that. Play by the real rules and teach them about communicating face to face and making deals. Give them 15 minutes a day to talk. Many of them may not talk outside of class and this puts everyone on a more level ground. It won't be perfect, but should work for your purposes.

Of course, the opinions here are mine and mine alone. But...I see bad things in your future if you make a class assignment on this site.

*Love this site, but it is not appropriate for a high school assignment. No offense to anyone*

Right on, jimgov. F2F is the way to go for a ton of different reasons.

I have to agree with both Krellin and Jimgov as far as doing this FTF. This site is great, but it's not appropriate for high school students- and you can get in trouble for leading them here. On top of that, FTF allows more control from your end, as may be necessary to take moves and apply questions to them with visual aid (ie Germany moved to Burgundy in Spring 1901 and bounced France who made the same move. What if France had used support in Marseilles?)

I support the idea of using the game in an IR class because the gain for certain learners is substantial while there is little negative effect. I don't think this game would turn anyone who is already in the class off to the topic. I would definitely analyze every move, though, and possibly create a larger map to accommodate each student with a country. World Map (eliminating certain countries, adding SC's, etc.) may be better, though more time would need to be dedicated to communication. It depends how often the class meets and what you actually have to get through.

Someone mentioned generals and PM's. As far as that idea goes, I would steer against having the generals become adversaries. Instead, I would advise the PM's to conduct diplomacy while the generals of the same country talk to each other to formulate an attack strategy. Perhaps even swap positions every year. I think that is far more effective because the generals have to deal with the diplomacy of the PM. Though they're all on the same team, it shows how even people who have the same goal can come into conflict (it makes sense to attack Germany strategically, but diplomatically, the PM feels that Germany is more likely to aid their country and should be kept around for that).

All my opinion. I'm not a teacher, but have some type of experience teaching and as a school board member.

F2F for sure. I really can't see the pros for not doing so.

As a middle school teacher, I've held a couple game days this year playing Age of Empires III (the board game). http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22545/glenn-drovers-empires-the-age-of-discovery. The students had a blast, and walked away more enthused and engaged about the subject matter. We played 2 boards, ftf.

how many students are there? diplomacy games take a long time. have them play a game online over the weekend or something to determine who is good. make 7 of the top players be team captains and have 7 teams rather than each person being an individual. then do one face-to-face game. draw the map on the board, and have all the teams negotiate with each other, and on each move update the board and discuss it.... but even then it would take a long time to do a full game.

if you have several maps going on at once then it sucks for the guys who lose and it is hard for you to be able to have classroom discussion with all the games going on at once...

Another idea would be to have 1 Full Press and 1 Public Press. I think that would be a good lesson in the subtleties between diplomacy (in real life) in private and in public places such as the UN

Y'all should stop complaining. If this guy wants to play on this site, let him. If things go awry, he can do something different next year. I was introduced to this site because a teacher of mine after we took the AP test and had nothing better to do. It's not a great teaching method, but it's something that'll keep the kids occupied and will help them learn communication skills. Even if he just offers it as a reward if they get a high class average for the semester, it's still just going to be something to keep kids interested. I have had wonderful history teachers that really try and make history come to life. It may not be as beneficial as you'd like, but it may change their perspective on history and learning in general. And all he'd have to do is use a remote access (or similar) program to monitor their internet use. I'm sure this guy's not an idiot, y'all don't gotta be so up in arms about this.