KidCitizen Screenshot - Image credit: Muzzy Lane Software
The Library of Congress announced last week the release of three new,
free Educational Serious Games, all of which make extensive use of the online
collections of the Library of Congress.
These “Serious Games” were developed by three organizations selected and
supported by grants from the Library to create applications for use in K-12
classrooms. Each game is intended to provide young people with engaging and
meaningful opportunities to learn about Congress and civic participation using
primary sources from the Library’s online collections.
(For more on effective strategies for teaching with primary sources, please
find the Library of Congress Using Primary Sources page).
The three organizations are the Roy
Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, in
Fairfax, Virginia; Indiana University’s
Center on Representative Government, in Bloomington, Indiana; and Muzzy
Lane Software, of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Each “Serious Game” takes a different approach to the subjects, and
each is based on the rich historical primary source items that the Library
makes freely available at www.loc.gov.
Here are the three Serious Games:
1. KidCitizen by Muzzy
Lane Software
KidCitizen
introduces a new way for young students to engage with history through primary
sources. KidCitizen provides a growing set of interactive Episodes where
K-5 students work with primary source photographs to explore Congress and Civic
Engagement.
KidCitizen Episodes
capitalize on the active and social nature of young children's learning. They
use primary sources for rich demonstrations, interactions, and models of
literacy in the course of innovative hands-on activities that make academic
content meaningful, build on prior experiences, and foster visual literacy and
historical inquiry.
SEE: With a mentor character,
children investigate images in detail using age appropriate techniques and
scaffolding. They zoom in, find,
collect, and match image elements.
THINK: While investigating,
students collect evidence from images in their journal, then use that to think
about what they are seeing – what is happening,
and why?
WONDER: Students use their journal
to construct posters, timelines, or other outputs to wonder about connections
between what they’ve found and their own lives.
KidCitizen Episodes
run on PCs, Macs, and iOS and Android mobile devices. They can be accessed from
the KidCitizen website at www.kidcitizen.net.
All are free to play, and are accompanied by a teacher’s guide.
The first set of nine Episodes comprehends What are Primary Sources;
Congress and Child Labor; Community Helpers; Welcome to Congress; Snap a Photo:
Agent of Change; Capture the Flag; Congress and School Lunch; Together Our
Voices Matter; and Kids
in Action.
The app also includes cloud software tools that let educators create
their own Episodes and share them with students.
2. Eagle Eye Citizen by
the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University
3. Engaging Congress by
the Indiana University Center on Representative Government
Engaging Congress is a
series of game-based learning activities that explores the basic tenets of
representative government and the challenges that it faces in contemporary
society. Primary source documents are used to examine the history and evolution
of issues that confront Congress today. The game is targeted towards high
school students and educators, but the information and format is enjoyable for
anyone seeking to learn how government works.
About Library of
Congress TPS Program
For more than a decade, the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS)
program has provided extensive professional development opportunities for
educators and enabled the development and dissemination of teaching materials
focused on using the Library’s digitized primary sources. In its fiscal 2015
appropriation, Congress allocated additional funds to the TPS program to
increase competitive opportunities for developing online interactives and apps
for classroom use on Congress and civic participation, enabling last week’s
announcement.
In 2015, the Library received 33 proposals from a wide range of
organizations, including institutions of higher education, cultural
institutions and other collaborative partnerships, to develop Educational Serious
Games.
The selected organizations, Muzzy Lane Software, the Indiana University
Center on Representative Government, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and
the New Media at George Mason University, have conducted extensive teacher and
student testing of their interactives, developed supporting
professional-development resources and opportunities for teachers, and are
embarking on extensive outreach campaigns.
A second group of organizations was selected in 2016; their projects
are scheduled to launch in 2018.