A “Supreme” (and educational!) new computer game
An article in today’s Washington Post details Our Courts, the civic education project former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has been working on since her retirement from the bench.
I visited the Our Courts Web site to play the Supreme Decision game this afternoon, and came away thoroughly impressed. This particular game (there are two on the site) takes players through a hypothetical legal case about a student’s right to wear a certain t-shirt in school by (1) showing them all sides of arguments, complete with animated lawyers for each side being questioned by animated Justices, and the Justices deliberating with one another in their private chambers; (2) asking them questions about those arguments to ensure they understand the legal arguments presented; and (3) allowing them to make their own decision and thus cast the deciding vote (of course!) in the case. The game is designed for 7th and 8th graders, but although it wasn’t challenging, it held my interest for the 10 minutes or so it took to complete it.
I suggest that parents introduce their kids to this informative and fun resource at home, or tell their kids’ teachers about it. This game certainly would have been helpful when I was teaching my American Government course last year!
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Hi Michael — Thought I would chime in on this. I thought Supreme Decision was actually a bit challenging in the spectrum questions — where they asked you to slate the degree to which certain school policies violated your rights. When David and I played, we embarrassingly got a few of those “wrong.” I’m not used to subjective challenges in video games!
Kashmir — I’m glad you were able to check out the game. Perhaps I should have disclosed in my post that I took a school law course in grad school, so I had a head start in thinking about the specific issues involved in a t-shirt case. Oops!
In response to another comment. See in context »