Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

3.26.09 | This appalling reality was the spark behind Our Courts, a new online program conceived by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and supported in part by the MacArthur Foundation.

Justice O’Connor went on the road last week, including The Daily Show and Good Morning America, to announce the program.

MacArthur grantee James Gee is leading a team that is designing a game within Our Courts called “Guardians of Law.” The game challenges players to develop rules of law in their fictional world using existing U.S. case law and the U.S. Constitution. Kids, for example, are developing laws to protect robots’ rights, who in the fictional world of the game have begun to demand the right not to be enslaved by people.

Our Courts’ classroom curriculum and out-of-school gaming options bring civics to life and light a fire in kids, Dr. Gee said in a 2008 interview with RezEd. It moves kids from memorizing facts to truly understanding what those facts mean.

“We want young people teaching and mentoring each other in the online world, and critiquing each other. Some of that is hard to do in schools,” Gee said. Our Courts goes about it both ways. It allows teachers to spark an interest in the students, and then kids can go into the game world and gain a real passion for civic change.