Classroom edition: teach social studies, statistics, ethics and history with a single life

What changes in the classroom edition

"15 and up" is not an official rating; it is this site's own standard. The classroom edition removes a further layer on a more conservative basis.

• ·Removed: suicide, homicide, violence and corporal punishment at home, choosing to drink or smoke or gamble or commit a crime, affairs, lotteries, drug addiction, sexual violence.
• ·Kept: poverty, illness, war and displacement, early death, divorce and remarriage, losing family. These happen at real rates — seeing the world as it is is the point of the simulation.
• ·Switched off: the tree hole, publicly shared lives, memorial halls, share cards, payment and exports.
• ·If a life ends before 15, the record explains why at the top and adds a question to think about together.

Student data

The classroom edition receives nothing that could identify a student. Names, contact details and anything a student writes never reach the server; what they type at a pause stays on that device.

The fact that the classroom edition is on is stored only in that browser. On another device, open the classroom link again.

Before class

• ·Live one or two lives yourself first — it makes it much easier to know what to ask.
• ·Open the classroom link on your device. A "Classroom" marker appears at the top of the page.
• ·Write the student URL on the board, or pin it to the class page.
• ·To give the whole class the same baby, use a class code (below).

A 40-minute lesson

• ·5 min — open: look at the numbers on the homepage. About four babies are born every second. If you could not choose where you were born, what would be waiting for you?
• ·15 min — same start: use a class code so everyone is born as the same baby, live to 10–15, then stop. What was the same, what differed?
• ·10 min — compare: put lives from different countries side by side and find the biggest gaps.
• ·5 min — close: pick one life from today and write one sentence to that person.

Across subjects

• ·Social studies: let everyone be born separately and write the countries on the board. India, China, Nigeria and Pakistan come up often.
• ·Maths and statistics: run the same statistics many times and compare with the real figures alongside. More people converge on the real value, while one life can sit far from the average — both are true at once.
• ·Ethics: pick a life very unlike your own and speak one year from inside it. Separate what that person could not choose from what they could.
• ·History: the same country born in different decades — how life expectancy and under-five mortality moved, and how war and famine entered one person's life.

Class codes

Four digits. Write them on the board; students enter the code before they are born, and everyone with the same code gets the same baby.

A code produces the same baby only on that day. Tomorrow, the same digits give a different person.

After the life ends

The ending page can be printed or saved as an image and used as a worksheet: the year-by-year table, the choices made, how the family changed, and why that person died.

Video and album exports are not available in the classroom edition — they are paid features and not needed in a lesson.

FAQ

• ·How long is one life? Choose 30 minutes, 1 hour or 1.5 hours; pause or speed up at any time.
• ·Will it run on school tablets? Yes — Chromebooks, iPads, Android tablets and phones, no install needed.
• ·What if a student's life ends very early? It happens, and it matters. About 37 of every 1,000 children worldwide die before five. Tell the class beforehand and it lands better.
• ·Will students see what others wrote? No. All public posting and browsing is switched off.
• ·Does it cost anything? No. The classroom edition is free throughout and never shows a payment screen.