Quality Global Citizenship online games

While varied, entertaining, and delightful, we have a general policy that excludes computer games from our classroom. With rare exception, the educational value of most games is overshadowed by other opportunities offered by the classroom. Most online games (especially those with educational value) tend to be fairly solitary, so the feeling is that they're best left for home. 

However, occasionally we come across some gems that line up nicely with what we're studying. Here are two games that I've introduced to the class that not only reinforce a lot of what we've been studying this month, but are also challenging and a lot of fun. (They're also free!)  

Garbage Dreams

Garbage Dreams is a game developed as a tie-in to a documentary of the same name. The film chronicles the lives of three teenagers in Cairo who make their living recycling the trash of others. The game tasks the player with matching their impressive recycling rate: They are able to recycle 80% of the trash that they collect. The player has to use limited resources to turn a profit, then use that money wisely to invest in better technology. In the process of playing, you learn quite a bit about what can and cannot be recycled and why. Investing resources in different technologies allows you to recycle more items, which (ideally) justifies the expense. It effectively illustrates that recycling is not makes ecological sense, but economic sense as well. 

Also, you get to feed old sandwiches and banana peels to a cartoon goat. 

It's fun and informative! 

Play Garbage Dreams

Some more background on Garbage Dreams can be found here. 

ElectroCity

ElectroCity challenges the player to take a small sleepy town on a resource-rich patch of land and develop it sustainably and responsibly. You are given numerous opportunities to balance short term gains with longterm growth. For example, clear cutting a forest may yield some much needed cash, but turning it into a national forest may be a better course for longterm success. It's an extremely open-ended game that allows the player to experience the pros and cons of a number of real world conundrums. 

Play ElectroCity