Education Week - March 1, 2017 - 8

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS >
Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
www.digitaldirections.org

K-12 Digital Civics Tool
Tackles U.S. Politics
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Photos by Keith King for Education Week

going to be slanted," said Jo Phillips, a veteran civics teacher at West
Virginia's Ripley High.
That's the goal, said Louise Dubé, the group's executive director. Classrooms in both red and blue states need to remain focused on the processes by which government is supposed to operate, she said.
Every state now requires students to take courses in social studies or civics in order to graduate from high school, and 17 states now include social
studies or civics-test results in their accountability systems, according to a
December report from the Education Commission of the States' National
Center for Learning and Civic Engagement.
Other digital and online games, such as the "Mission US" series or even
the popular strategy game "Civilization," are also used in the classroom to
teach civics, history, and social studies. They may not captivate students'
attention quite like "Assassin's Creed" or "Minecraft," but they're likely
more compelling for many students than a textbook.
Many educators have turned to iCivics, with its highly vetted content,
because it can help inexperienced teachers provide a baseline of foundational knowledge, while also allowing classroom veterans to explore
issues much further.
Still, even such well-regarded tools have been at times hard-pressed to
stay relevant in the current political environment.
Elected ofﬁcials from both parties are subjecting governmental institutions and norms to new stresses. And President Donald Trump has begun
pushing a nationalist-populist agenda that often falls outside the familiar
conservative-liberal political spectrum. Both
present new challenges for civics educators,
said Shawn Healy, a program director at the
Robert R. McCormick Foundation, which
seeks to foster a more engaged citizenry.
"Are we doing students justice by teaching
'how a bill becomes a law,' when it doesn't
really work that way?" Healy asked. "It
would be good if the whole ﬁeld grappled
with that."
Dubé of iCivics acknowledges the challenges. But the U.S. system of government
was designed to adapt, and with the help
of technology, civics education should be
expected to do the same, Dubé maintained.
"As the system evolves, we need to keep
pace and stay relevant," she said.
Teacher Kymberli Wregglesworth, left,
assists Andrea Madison, a junior at Onaway
High School in Michigan, navigate the iCivics
digital game during a civics class.

Jackson County
RIPLEY HIGH SCHOOL Ripley, W.Va.

2016 Presidential Election Results

73.3%

Trusting a Digital Game to Find Middle Ground
o Phillips grew up in this small, strongly proTrump town of 3,200 near the Ohio line. She's
taught some combination of civics and U.S. government at the local high school since 2007.
As the country's political discourse has become
more sharply divided, iCivics has become her
"right arm" in the classroom, Phillips said.
Partly, that's because she can trust the game
not to be biased.
"I try to point out both sides of everything, and
I remind my students not to forget about the middle," Phillips said.
iCivics has also become a more integral part
of her instruction as the school has added more
technology. At ﬁrst, students got the occasional
chance to play the game in Ripley's computer lab.
Now, every student has his or her own schoolissued digital device.
As a result, Phillips and her students have
started to branch out into the full iCivics library,
which now includes nearly 20 games. There's "Win
the White House," about the electoral process.
"Executive Command" focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the president. "Do I Have a Right?"

aims to help students learn about the Bill of Rights.
Olivia Ludtman, 17, ﬁnds the games more engaging than the textbooks and paper articles her
school used previously.
"You get a hands-on experience," Ludtman
said. "When we play iCivics in class, you can hear
a pin drop."
There can, however, be a downside to all that
engagement, said Joseph Kahne, a senior researcher in the civic-engagement research group
at Mills College in Oakland, Calif.
A wide partisan divide combined with strong emotions on different sides of key issues can make classroom discussions treacherous terrain, Kahne said.
And as political institutions are stressed in new
ways, he said, teachers have to ﬁnd ways to incorporate that reality into their instruction.
It's a challenge that Phillips is still mulling, in
part because she worries that the news media are
being overly dire in how they portray the changes
Trump has brought to Washington.
"We survived Nixon, we survived wars. The republic still works," Phillips said. "If we focus on
the chaos, it's only going to paralyze us." ■

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 1, 2017 | www.edweek.org

21.6%
CLINTON

TRUMP

Ripley

west virginia

http://www.digitaldirections.org http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - March 1, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 1, 2017