Students at Randolph Technical Center explain how their games promote education in civics

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the World Wide Workshop Foundation have just announced two West Virginia students as winners of the 1st Annual Globaloria Civics Games Competition. Team ‘The Fox Racers‘ won first place with ‘The Race to Justice,’ a game that teaches about civil law in a fun, interactive way.

Globaloria, a Knight-supported program created in 2006 by the World Wide Workshop Foundation, teaches young people how to create educational games and simulations for their own academic and professional development. By creating these games, students are directly contributing to their communities in socially meaningful ways, while building Web 2.0 skills at the same time. By immersing students and teachers in a learning-by-doing framework, participants not only gain technical abilities, such as wiki formatting, multimedia production, programming, and game design, but also real knowledge of the actual issues they choose to base their games on.

“Globaloria provides the next generation of citizens and decision-makers with the 21^st-century literacy they will need to thrive in the digital age,” said Jessica Goldfin, Journalism Program Associate at the Knight Foundation. “We are impressed with how well this approach to civics and news-literacy learning has been embraced by both students and teachers.”