Game Review: "Do I have a right?"

         Online games were always fun to play when I was growing up, especially when my teachers had shown us different interactive games to “play” but were basically tools to help students learn. It’s been a while since I’ve played any actual games with some type of learning objective for a school setting but the opportunity to look for some and try them out was given. The game that was chosen was “DoI have a right?” In this game students from ages 11 and up are taught about the different amendments and rights that we have regarding law and government. As I was playing, I realized that the game is very similar to playing diner dash but with more of a memory concept in order to become more familiar with each amendment.

               

I would recommend this game for teachers who are teaching social studies or government in secondary education. Although I’m not a very tech savvy person, I found that the game was easy to navigate through and I’m sure that with our technology generation of kids, they will be able to do the same when first learning how to play. The appeal of the game would get any student hooked and the challenge of the game would force them to think about the different scenarios that are presented to them, ultimately allowing them to remember those rights. The feedback given at the end was also helpful in showing students strengths in weaknesses that may need extra practice.

               

It was interesting looking for different games, especially trying to find games within that would help with physical education (PE) because most online games that dealt with PE would be geared more toward learning math and counting numbers or spelling. Creating the rubric for this activity was also a bit challenging having to come up with different targets that would fit. It wasn’t like creating a writing or project rubric and was based more on age appropriateness and how well kids are able to access them. This is something that doesn’t necessarily need to be factored into rubrics for other classroom activities when the content and age groups are already set and known.

My partner for the assignment and I both used our rubric to grade the game and came out that we gave it a high score. I gave it a 36/40. The one category that we thought differently about regarded the objectives of the game. I gave it a 5 mainly because there were other resources that were provided for teachers to use as an actual lesson in class and had other objectives and learning outcomes that were very particular to the targets in the game. Check out the rubric below, and hopefully you check out this game on icivics as well as the other awesome games for social studies.