Okay, here’s the situation: we started Fantasy Congress during the last school year, but we were only using it locally. Then, all hell broke loose and people kept asking to sign up. The version that we were testing out was okay, but not particularly user friendly, and somewhat onerous for the teacher running it. We do want to open it up to other teachers, because it seems like the interest is definitely there, but we don’t want them to have a crappy experience (and, being that we are teachers ourselves, we won’t have time to troubleshoot everyone’s crappy experience.)

I thought that I would work on it over the summer, but the summer turned out to be extremely crazy as my wife changed jobs and we had to try to sell our house, relocate, and find a new house.

When I eventually came back to it, I realized that the programming for the site was going to be a bit more than I could handle on my own. So we began contacting some of our programmer friends, all of whom have jobs, and therefore are also too busy.

HOWEVER, I did receive confirmation that one of my buddies will indeed help us get the site up and running. I don’t want to give a date this time around. I’m beginning to feel like George R.R. Martin when I keep promising the next installment but in reality am nowhere close to being ready to offer it. But soon. I hope. I sincerely hope for that.

So, thanks for your patience. Hopefully, all of you wonderful Social Studies teachers will be able to sign up soon and give us feedback about your experience.

Keep calm, and carry on.

We have received several inquiries about signing up for the league.  Most of you correctly noticed that a signup option is not yet available.  That option is nearly ready to roll out.  However, we are working through some programming glitches and continue to seek ways in which to automate the system more efficiently.  The system is being set up to be used by teachers and their students, but eventually we hope to add an option for individuals wishing to create their own leagues.
Hopefully we can have enough in place soon to allow people to beta test it before the 113th Congress is sworn in in January.  Our goal is to be fully functional by that point.  We will encourage teachers to try it out and provide feedback.  The best way to discover when the site is ready to be used is to follow us on Twitter.

Carry on.

We are a few weeks into developing the Fantasy Congress website.  We are testing the game and scoring on a middle school Social Studies class.  So far we have two weeks of statistics.  It is interesting to see which legislators are emerging as leaders, and to note the shocking amount of players with absolutely no activity (come one guys, sponsor an amendment or resolution…something!)  So far the legislative category seems to be working out well, but eventually we would like to add other scoring categories, such as media appearances and social media popularity.

Still, our absolute first priority is to incorporate live scoring.  Right now, our test case teacher is entering the scores manually to the website, and that’s just not how we want this to go.  But fear not, for we’ve got a guy working on the live scoring feature.

We have been adding to our social media enterprise with our facebook page, google plus page, twitter account, and this blog.  Hopefully we can develop a bit of a following and have some teachers signed up before the start of the 113th Congress in January.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Today we used the students’ data about their legislators to modify the scoring system.

Amendments

Reps and Senators now receive 1 point for each amendment they add to a bill.  It’s a one time deal, and passage of bill does not change it.

Resolutions

People in Congress pass all sorts of ridiculous resolutions.  So introducing a resolution only earns you 1 point. If it goes to a committee and passes out of there, then you get 2 more points.  If the resolution is accepted by the chamber, then that is worth 3 points.

Bills

The scoring for actual bills has remained the same at this point.

The developers here at Fantasy Congress headquarters are working overtime to roll out the new version of the website.  The new version (called the 112th) will offer users much more functionality.  We are beta testing at a middle school in Illinois, and hope to have all of the newest features available to all users by March.

Some features we hope to add include:

• Automatic scoring
• Live draft
• Teacher control options

Stay tuned for more developments.