iCivics - Educational Games to encourage student engagement in politics and civics

In today's media class, I was introduce to a website called www.icivics.org.  An initiative of the Chief Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the U.S., the site is an interactive gaming community aimed at encouraging greater involvement in community and civics.  The site is also marketed as a much needed tool for educators who complain they have lacked resources with which to engage their students in this important subject.

In exploring the site, I navigated through the about section, where I learned that the games are designed to be played either by individuals or groups, and are designed to be completed in a reasonable amount of time for use in the classroom.  There are also forums for students as well as sections directed at educators and classroom teachers.

In choosing a game to test out, having taught mathematics this past year, I was drawn to the game People's Pie (http://www.icivics.org/games/peoples-pie) which is a budget allocation simulator for the Federal Government.  The object of the game is for students to set an acceptable tax rate and then determine which programs are worthy of being funded or not, while trying to maintain (if possible) a balanced budget.  The kicker is that you must aim to keep the citizenry happy - a trick which is easier said than done.  Every program requires a piece of the budgetary pie, but your pie is only as big as the taxes collected.  More taxes or cuts to programs both decrease citizen (and voter!) satisfaction.  However, overspending creates a deficit situation, which once again, is not a popular situation.

I found that the game was well thought out.  I can picture students in groups debating how bet to make choices about each of the ten categories of spending (which include education, military, and health care - issues that are constantly debated among real citizens).  The detailed descriptions of each proposal is informative without being overwhelming, and I think that the graphics and the animated features of the avatars and characters would be appealing to students.  As a Canadian teacher, I feel that this, more than some of the other games, could appeal to my students as it is not necessarily aimed to promote a uniquely American system.  All in all, I feel this game, and others on the iCivics site, are a good resource for the classroom.