Gaming Exploration Post 1

The educational video game that I chose to explore and analyze throughout this blogpost is called iCivics.  I had never heard of, let alone, played this game.  I was immediately intrigued by this game, as the topic area is covers, pretty obviously, is civics, and I have never engaged with a civics video game before.  I was curious as to how they would make a fun and playable game out of a subject area that many students have given a reputation to as being notoriously “boring.”  I was also inclined to pick this game as I, specifically, remember taking civics in 9^th grade, and having a hard time paying attention and remaining engaged throughout the course.  I would have really enjoyed playing a game in that class to assist in retaining content, especially because so much of civics class relies on simple and monotonous memorization.  I believe a civics-targeted game is an excellent idea for these reasons and am excited to explore the effectiveness of a program that has great potential to assist civics students in achieving standards.

Upon first opening this site and creating an account, the set up seemed to be very user friendly.  There is a simple “play” button at the top, and upon clicking this, the user is taken to a page with different “routes” the student can explore.  These routes even included times estimated for completion and short synopsis’s of what students would be exploring under each.  These seem to be divided into different strands of civics standards that students must gain study for success in the course.  Some of the options included an “activation” which says focuses on picking and helping a movement grow, an “argument wars” option which allows one to argue real Supreme Court cases to test lawyering skills, a “branches of power” area where students learn to control all three branches of government, a “court quest”  button which takes students through the court system and allows students to guide citizens to the right place, a “crisis of nations” button where students can team up with other nations to solve international crises, and many others. 

I really liked how these different content areas of focus were broken up with explanations so that students could pick areas they find interesting or need more help with to practice with.  I think this aspect, as an educator, is an extremely powerful and useful feature of a gaming tool in the classroom.  The fact that this game is so diverse, but also organized in a way that helps students to not get lost in what they are learning, is so important.  I think the well-organized manner of this game is a major plus that helps the educational experience of the students greatly.  As the Mindshift reading said, it is crucial that both educators and students have a certain comfort level with a game in order for them to learn most effectively.  Simple games that are actually complex in what they teach are important, as they educate students most effectively in that they do a good job of instructing students slowly, but overall, to a large amount of material.  From first glance, my impression was that this game will do this.  There are many subject areas that are present from the hefty topic of civics that are organized in a way that makes it clear to students and teachers where they need to go to locate activities to practice a certain skill or idea.  This allows for more control in the learning experience, even though this, still, is a game; it makes it more playable.

The game also, by this system of breaking up subject points into different games, does a good job of allowing multiple entry points into content knowledge for all different kinds of learners.  There are enough different types of games on this site, that someone will find something interesting for them to practice and use.  Learning can take place in numerous different ways, just from this one, simple site.  This game could be well implemented into the classroom little by little.  There is so much to do in this game (for example, one “estimated time” for one section is 30+ minutes, and for another 10-15; there are more than 16 different sections), no one could utilize all of it at one time or in one sitting.  Instead, teachers could teach a lesson on one unit, and assign game play for a specific section that relates to this.  For instance, after learning about all that is takes to construct a law, a teacher could assign 20 minutes of play in the “law craft” section, wherein students are able to “jump into the lawmaking process of Congress.”  It can be utilized as a short-form game, in this way.

These were many takeaways I found from just looking at and investigating the format and basics of this iCivics platform.  I will be interested to see specifics of each type of game “section” as I begin to play with this game more and more.  I began my further exploration into iCivics by first exploring the “activate” section. First, I was prompted to select a character, there were many options of all different ethnicities, hair, and skin colors, which would allow students to feel they have a choice to personalize their character, but not so many options that they became too distracted in decorating their character (as I have noticed from personal experience utilizing games in the classroom that this can become an obsessive distraction for many students).  After selecting my character, I could select an issue that I wanted to fight.  These issues were good examples for students this age, as they were issues that the students could understand and relate to. I chose to stop bullying at school.  I was given an overarching objective, then, and tasks I needed to complete in order to achieve my objective.  I felt that this was a good system as it would keep students on task, reminding them what they were trying to work to achieve.  Many pop-ups on the screen were helpful in helping one adjust to the game and learn how to use it without being so aggressive that they were a distraction.

I then went through different mini-games while it walked me through examples of how to make a difference.  As I kept going, the “differences” I was making included taking action at different levels of government—I started in my school, then went local, and so on.  I thought this was a creative way to show kids how to make a positive difference while also educating them on different level of government.  One thing I noticed throughout the game was that there were more and more pop up messages throughout pointing me in the direction of what to do.  While useful, they may have been excessive and preventative in allowing for there to be flow of game play.  Perhaps the more I play, the fewer messages will pop up, however, I worry that the whole idea of iCivics having many mini-games to help in different subject areas of civics, while useful in many senses that I discussed earlier, may prevent the students from ever learning how to play each game well enough before it is already over.  Each game will be brand new, so they it will take them time to get comfortable to playing each.  The pop-up messages are necessary while learning the game, but they also seem to create a “choppiness” to the game and almost distract them from the lessons the game is trying to help them learn.  I hope this does not prove to be a continuous problem throughout each of the minigames in iCivics, but only time and practice playing will tell. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game and think that children would, too.  It would certainly hold their attention with the wide variety of games it offers, and definitely does a good job of teaching important lessons for civics.  Based off of the games I played today, and I did not play them all, I feel that this game would work better as a review game, after certain materials were already introduced.  But, I that could simply only be for the section I played today, as other games might work better into the curriculum in a different way.

I think this game best fits into the category of a role-playing game.  As described in Mindshift, this game has clear objectives where the user takes control by having the user take control as the lead in navigating different situations.  This is how this game works, except every single game has a different role for the students to take over.  They are thrown into a different scenario, all related to different areas of civics, with different instructions for completion of the task or objective.  My overall first experience with this game was a positive one, as it is user friendly and effectively educational.  As my time experimenting with this game goes on, I will be interested to see if it remains as simple to play as it at first seemed.

Do you guys think that it is a positive attribute of this game that it contains so many, diverse mini-games? Or do you think this prevents the students from becoming engulfed in the game?

Based off of my screenshots, do you find it to be user friendly, or do you think students may struggle with understanding how to effectively utilize it?