A while back I highlighted a visual explanation of the global financial crisis created by Say It Visually! The company has recently released a "visual explanation" of Skype, the popular Internet telephony application, that also seems worth highlighting. Here it is. (Click through to the post if you don’t see it.) Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page.

I’ve become increasingly fond of Twitter as a tool in my learning mix. I use it as one way of making notes on my travels across the Web and sharing them with others. I also use the hashtag functionality as one of the ways to track various topics of interest or to "channel" topics or issues I am finding into a single stream. For example, I have created #learningmonitor to tag items that I am considering for the monthly Learning Monitor newsletter. Not sure what a hashtag is, or for that matter, how to send out a "tweet"? Check out the excellent presentation below from Jane Hart. And when you are done, consider adding Twitter to your learning mix. (If you don’t see the presentation, click through to the original post. I also recommend clicking the "full" icon toward the lower left of the Slideshare box to view the presentation in full-screen mode.) (Note: Jane has embedded video from Commoncraft in this and Slideshare seems to set it autoplay - at least in Safari.) Click forward a few screens until you get to the video and hit "pause" to stop the audio. A pain, but worth it for the content.) Twitter Workshop  View more presentations from Jane Hart. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at http://twitter.com/missiontolearn

I don’t have any data on overall effectiveness, but englishcafe.com’s approach to teaching English can certainly be quite entertaining. Here’s the start of a new series that leverages the legacy of King of Pop Michael Jackson to expand the English learner’s vocabulary. It’s a thriller. (Click through if you don’t see the video.) Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page.

This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer. Finding ways to stretch and exercise your brain is important for a long happy life. Fortunately, the Internet is flush with games, tools, and web apps that will boost your mental power and leave your brain sweating. Here are 25 sites to try today: Brain Games BrainBashers - BrainBashers are a collection of brain teasers, riddles, games, puzzles, and optical illusions. This impressive brain game site updates games and puzzles regularly. BrainDen.com - This brain teaser site provides a variety of games and trivia to challenge your mind. BrainDen.com offers jokes, puzzles, trivia, riddles, games, and optical illusions-all designed to exercise your brain. Sharp Brains - Sharp Brains provides 50 top brain teasers and games everyone will enjoy. These games help to work your language, logic, math, memory, and attention skills. Braingle - With over 17,000 user-rated brain games, Braingle is the perfect place to boost your brain power. As an added bonus, this site also offers exercises to increase memory, vocabulary, creativity, and stress management. Brain Metrix - Brain Metrix is designed to build brain fitness. The site can increase your memory, reflex, and concentration through a collection of activities. Brain Teaser Central - Brain Teaser Central is a good place to stretch your brain with logic, math, illusions, games, puzzles, trivia, and more. Fit Brains - Fit Brains is a site with fun, free games that exercise five key cognitive brain areas: memory, executive, visual-spatial, concentration, and language. Brain Teasers Network - With daily brain teasers and an assortment of popular and challenging games, Brain Teaser Network is a handy site for building mental capacity. Oxbrain - Oxbrain offers lateral thinking puzzles and crossword puzzles. These custom-made crossword puzzles are entertaining and educational. Thinks.com - Thinks.com offers several fun games to challenge your brain, including crosswords, word searches, jigsaw puzzles, chess, and brain teasers. Brain Boosting Techniques Speed Reading - Speed reading is a great way to boost your brain power for sales, education, and careers. This free speed reading course builds memory and comprehension. Increase Brain Power - Increase Brain Power offers five simple and easy-to-use techniques for increasing your comprehension and memory. About.com - This site features 10 useful strategies for improving your memory. These techniques are simple to incorporate into everyday life. Illumine Training - Illumine Training offers workshops to increase creativity, mental agility, and concentration. The workshop on mind mapping is an excellent way to expand your mind and organize ideas. Fun-with-words.com - This mnemonics page from Fun-with-words.com offers three different mnemonics to retain important information like words, numbers, and names. Web Apps Flash Card Machine - Flash cards are a super way to study and retain important information. Flash Card Machine features a free web app for creating and sharing your own flash cards. OuTWIT me - This free Twitter app contains games for improving and exercising your mind. OuTWIT me features games like Code cracker, Tweet word, Tweet quiz, and Story teller. Imagination Cubed - Looking for a way to exercise your creative side? Check out this free app from GE. It allows you to illustrate and share your ideas with free drawing tools. Mindmeister - Mindmeister is a brainstorming app that increases your brain power through creative thinking. The app allows you to organize and visualize your ideas through mind mapping. Twivia - Twivia is a Twitter app that exercises your memory through daily trivia questions. Misc Tools LibriVox - Books are an excellent way to keep your brain fit and active. LibriVox offers lots of free audio books to keep your mind moving. Visuwords - Visuwords creates a visual neural network to demonstrate how words associate with one another-a great way to exercise your memory and build your vocabulary. Creative Writing Prompts - Creative writing makes connections with your thoughts, ideas, and the world around you. This site of writing prompts will give your creative side a major workout. Popling - Popling is a desktop app for people who want to learn without studying. It regularly displays small windows with questions on your computer screen so that you can learn languages, chemistry, geography, and more without really trying. WebMD - Exercise is the best way to keep your body and mind healthy. WebMD illustrates how exercise can make you think clearly and perform better. Guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes for OnlineCollege.org an online college resource. P.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Mission to Learn, I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed or use the e-mail subscription form at the top right side of this page

In part of a desperate effort to dive back into the blogosphere and try to get caught up on my reading, I came across this interesting little tool recently released to beta by the Open Knowledge Foundation: Weaving History. The gist of the tool is that it enables you to create what the foundation calls ‘factlets‘ that contain "information about historical events, persons, and so on, which you can string together to create historical ‘threads‘. These threads can then be visually represented on maps and timelines." You can only get a partial feel for the result through a still image, but here, for example, is a screen shot of the factlet for Shakespeare’s Works. Image of Shakespeare Factlet Weaving History struck a chord with me because it was precisely this sort of activity that, as a teacher of great books of the western world, first opened my eyes to the power of computer-based multimedia as a teaching and learning tool. Of course, back in those days I was using CD-ROMS on my Mac to put together the same sort of ‘factlets’ that Weaving History facilitates and would then use them in conjunction with teaching The Inferno or Madame Bovary to help put the works in context. (Context, of course, is such an important part of learning on so many levels!) If you are trying to get a quick, high-level sense of context and timeline around a person, event, or place about which you are learning, this may be a good tool to have in your learning mix. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. - Follow Mission to Learn on Twitter at http://twitter.com/missiontolearn Want to learn history from some of the best thinkers and writers on the topic? The Great Courses on DVD, CD, and Audio Download. Save 70%!

This is a guest post from Dena White. Open courseware collections focusing on health and medicine assist students and healthcare professionals learn more about their particular field, further their careers, and increase their learning potential without enrolling in and commuting to expensive continuing education organizations or colleges. Health and medical open courseware collections are available free of charge and are accessible any time and any place, as long as you have a connection to the Internet. Counseling Counseling professionals and psychology students can find training guides and other educational resources on the Internet via open courseware classes. These courses provide students with a broad-based perception of all of the different kinds of counseling. In addition, they also help students determine which sector of the field they would most like to pursue. These courses also provide working counselors and psychologists with access to cutting-edge theories and practices within the field. Anyone taking these courses will be able to build strong interpersonal, communication and decision-making skills as well as a firm understanding of the social and scientific issues that surround the field of health and medicine. Classes in the counseling open course collection are provided by several fine schools such as the University of Massachusetts Boston, Utah State University, The Open University, the University of Michigan and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. Dental Hygiene For a basic background on dentistry and human biology, in addition to specific training in public health, denture care, and geriatric dentistry, students can use open courseware classes to build on their education and dentistry skills. Tufts University School of Dental Medicine offers classes in this collection covering topics such as cancer, dentures, elderly patients, public healthcare and water fluoridation. The open courseware classes related to dental medicine and dental hygiene is effective in preparing students of advanced programs in the dental field as well as help professionals learn even more about the dental industry. Emergency Management Disaster relief, emergency management, and terrorism response are all rising fields in the healthcare industry. Respected institutions such as Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health allow students to use educational resources online that teach skills in making decisions, responding to terrorist acts, analyzing public health policies, treating mass populations, as well as treatment in a wide variety of conditions and symptoms. Food And Nutrition Science This open course collection features topics such as the basics of human nutrition, bioterrorism, official food policy and agricultural science. Schools such as the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Tufts University and the University of California Berkeley provide a wide range of resources and courses that will assist students in understanding farming and economics, environmental systems, the effects of terrorism and so much more. Students will learn all about crop breeding, biology, plant infestation, healthy living, human metabolism, natural nutrients, as well as poison in public water and food supplies. Relevant classes are available for farmers, nutritionists, agricultural leaders, emergency management professionals, healthcare professionals and scientists to help them stay up to date in their specific fields. Gerontology Healthcare professionals who work with elderly or aging patients are able to increase their educational training with online classes through schools such as MIT and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The topics covered in these courses include Medicare, the aging process, nursing homes, mental disorders, health care policies, and neurological conditions in elderly patients as well as many more helpful subjects. Rounding out the top ten free health and medical open courseware collections are courses in Health Care Administration, Occupational Safety and Health, Pharmacy, Public Health and Radiologic Science. Open courseware collections offer students and professionals with a unique opportunity to learn all kinds of relevant information to help keep them on top of their field. Stay tuned for more on these! DENA WHITE is a freelance writer and covers topics such as nurse assistant and medical careers, health care topics, and more.

This post is in the process of being restored after a massive server failure at Bluehost. The 5th annual Games for Change Festival is coming up soon, and while I don’t think it is in the Mission to Learn budget for me to attend, it seems like a good time to poke around and see what sorts of games might be out there that are geared towards teaching people something that will make a difference in the world. Fair warning, you could easily eat up a big chunk of your day following the links in this post. Buy hey, you’ll be helping out the world a bit in the process. Here’s what I found : Browser-based and Free Deliver the Net Deliver the Net "….a cool new game created by the UN Foundation to commemorate World Malaria Day, April 25th. The challenge: race the sun and hand out as many insecticide-treated bed nets as you can to African families. The more nets you deliver - before the mosquitoes come out - the more lives you save. Once you’re done playing the game, sign up, confirm your email, and a life-saving bed net will be sent on your behalf!" (Nearly 2 million nets sent as of this posting) Karma Tycoon Developed by DoSomething.org "rocks the gaming world by offering you a thrilling ride through the world of social entrepreneurship as you earn Karma in virtual communities across the US." Also offers a teachers curriculum Ayiti: The Cost of Life "What is it like to live in poverty, struggling every day to stay healthy, keep out of debt, and get educated? Find out now in this challenging role playing game created by the High School students in Global Kids with the game developers at Gamelab, in which you take responsibility for a family of five in rural Haiti." From UNICEF with Microsoft support. 3rd World Farmer "3rd World Farmer … aims at simulating the real-world mechanisms that cause and sustain poverty in 3rd World countries. In the game, the player gets to manage an African farm, and is soon confronted with the often difficult choices that poverty and conflict necessitate. We find this kind of experience efficient at making the issues relevant to people, because players tend to invests their hopes in a game character whose fate depends on him. We aim at making the player "experience" the injustices, rather than being told about them, so as to stimulate a deeper and more personal reflection on the topics." Free Rice An addictive vocabulary game that promises "For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program." More than 29 billion grains donated as of this posting. Go Goat Go "Get a goat to help you grow more food! They eat weeds, their milk is magic and plants love their poo…" Just one of a number of games featuring Christian Aid’s Global Gang http://www.globalgang.org/funandgames/games/Default.aspx Darfur is Dying "Darfur is Dying is a viral video game for change that provides a window into the experience of the 2.5 million refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan. Players must keep their refugee camp functioning in the face of possible attack by Janjaweed militias. Players can also learn more about the genocide in Darfur that has taken the lives of 400,000 people, and find ways to get involved to help stop this human rights and humanitarian crisis." From mtvU in partnership with the Reebok Human Rights Foundation. Whack TB "Can you whack TB off the face of the earth? Play our game and learn more about fighting TB!" From the Families USA Global Health Initiative. My U.S. Rep: Role Play Congress "Now’s your chance to role play your favorite(or not so) House of Representative and help them become more popular! Based on real voting data, My US Rep allows you to discover your Rep’s hopes and dreams within an engaging game experience. Help your Rep become the most popular, look for bills to vote on, interact with in-game characters, collect cash and buy media time." eLections: Your Adventure in Politics "Inspired by the classic board game "The Game of Life," players will role-play their own virtual candidates running for President. The one or two-player game is both genuinely entertaining and genuinely educational - with emphasis on delivering a fun learning experience. Kids can play with parents, students with teachers, users of all ages with a friend, classmate, or with a computer-generated opponent. The latest edition of eLECTIONS also offers a computer-generated Third Party candidate. Created by the cable industry’s non-profit education foundation, Cable in the Classroom, in partnership with CNN Student News, C-SPAN and HistoryTM. Good teacher resources." Nuclear Weapons: The Nobel Peace Prize "Take on the mission to disarm the world of nuclear weapons with the help of eight "Peace Doves!"" There are also five other educational games at this site. Global Warming Interactive "CO2FX is a web based multi-user educational game which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and science policy decisions. The game is driven by a systems dynamics model and is presented in a user friendly interface intended for the high school user." Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Climate Challenge "A game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office." From the BBC. Wasteland Adventure "Time: 3010 AD. After humans destroyed the ecosystem. The earth lost the ability to heal and the environment continues to get worse. The freash air and clean water are polluted. People have to wear breathing masks lest the toxic air rots their luncks. Human beings encounter a next critical crisis. The son of a scientist, BOBO is very interested in the garbage that has polluted the earth. He collects all kinds of usable garbage to make into his toys. However, BOBO has an evil self. Sometimes he will become lazy. One day BOBO falls asleep in the garbage…" World Without Oil "WORLD WITHOUT OIL is an alternate reality event, a serious game for the public good. It invites everyone to help simulate a global oil shock. People participate by contributing original online stories, created as though the oil shock were really happening. The game’s masters rank the participants ("players") according to their contributions to our realistic portrayal of the oil shock. The game also places value on player-created communities, collaborative stories, and collective efforts. Each contribution helps the game arrive at a larger truth. No team of experts knows better than a given individual what effect an oil shock would have upon that individual’s life, or what action he or she will take to cope. Personal reactions to our simulated oil shock, placed in context with many other points of view, will help us all realize what’s at stake in our oil-fired culture." Stop Disasters! "The on-line game aims at teaching children how to build safer villages and cities against disasters. Children will learn playing how the location and the construction materials of houses can make a difference when disasters strike and how early warning systems, evacuation plans and education can save lives." From the United Nation/International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Multiple languages. Good teacher resources Stop Whaling Game "Steer the Greenpeace inflatable boat around the seas and intercept the dangerous harpoons from the whaling ship. To make the whaling ship stop whaling, you must try and get your activists on board the whaling ship. Good luck!" From GreenPEace UK Food Detectives Fight BAC "The Food Detectives Fight BAC!® game gives kids a fun way to learn about foodborne illness. More and more, foodborne illness is making news headlines. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne illnesses in the United States affect millions of people and cause thousands of deaths every year. The CDC says 300,000 people are hospitalized every year." From New Mexico State University. The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detectives "There has been a mysterious outbreak of unhealthy habits hitting too many boys and girls. If we don’t solve these cases, and fast, kids might not make the right food and exercise choices as they grow, and that could be trouble! All junior food detectives will get secret training on how to eat right and exercise. You can investigate fun games like Whack A Snack, Soccer, and Zap the TV. Plus you can print out classified clues on ways to be healthy, then share them with your parents, teachers, and pals." From Kaiser Permanente. Good teacher resources. McDonald’s Video Game "Making money in a corporation like McDonald’s is not simple at all! Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaughter, from the restaurant management to the branding. You’ll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest compan[ies] of the world." Multiple languages. Offline version available. From La Molle Industria. http://www.molleindustria.org/ Desktop/Free Free, though in most instances donations are encouraged. Food Force "As team rookie you have six missions to complete. Each mission represents a part of the process of delivering food aid to an area in crisis. The final mission shows you how food aid can help people rebuild their lives in the years following a disaster." United Nations World Food Programme. Multiple languages. Good teacher resources. Fatworld FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S. The game’s goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations. Existing approaches to nutrition advocacy fail to communicate the aggregate effect of everyday health practices. It’s one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away. WolfQuest "Learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Play alone or with friends in on-line multiplayer missions, explore the wilderness, hunt elk, and encounter stranger wolves in your quest to find a mate. Ultimately, your success will depend on forming a family pack, raising pups, and ensuring the survival of your pack." From the Minnestota Zoo and eduweb under a grant from the National Science Foundation. Harpooned "Harpooned is a free game for Windows. It is a Cetacean Research Simulator, where you play the role of a Japanese scientist performing research on whales around Antarctica." See also the YouTube trailer for Harpooned. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4KN6EfX6M Re-Mission The result, a game called Re-Mission (featuring Roxxi, the intrepid nanobot), is a challenging, 3D "shooter" with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the body of young patients with different kinds of cancer.  Created by leading video game developers and animators in collaboration with scientific and medical consultants and HopeLab staff, this state-of-the-art game is designed to be cool and fun, while helping players to increase their personal knowledge about cancer and improve their confidence in their ability to manage their cancer. Watch the trailer Desktop/Paid PeaceMaker "PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again." $19.95 (Arabic, English, Hebrew) Note: I had recently updated this post to "36 Games…" before a massive server outage at Bluehost erased the newer post. I will add back the additional 10 games soon, along with some others. If you have games you would like to see here, please comment and include a URL. Jeff Cobb Mission to Learn P.S. If you enjoy what you read here at Mission to Learn, please subscribe to the RSS feed. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It’s been far too long since my last round-up of learning games, but I have been squirreling away quite a few. Here’s a list of 12, with a bonus thrown in at the end. Most of these have to do with environmental issues, but there are also some that address the digital divide, microfinance, and helping kids deal with divorce. Except for any text in italics, all of the descriptions come from the game site. Also, unless otherwise noted, all of these are free! 51Tree.org 51 Tree is a new online computer game (social issue game) that lets players plant virtual trees in the country(ies) of their choice. It is great fun to play and teaches players all about the importance of tree planting, forest coverage and carbon offsets. EnerCities Are you ready to take on the challenge of running your own virtual city? Do you have the skills to create a solid, sustainable energy strategy? Will you build a nuclear plant or go solar? Whether you are an industrial tycoon or treehugging hippie, join the exclusive EnerCities beta program now. Your citizens need you! Catchment Detox Play Catchment Detox to see if you can repair a damaged river catchment and create a sustainable and thriving economy. It’s an online game where you’re in charge of the whole catchment. You get to decide what activities you undertake - whether to plant crops, log forests, build factories or set up national parks. The aim is to fix environmental problems and provide food and wealth for the population. LogiCity LogiCity is a fun interactive computer game with a difference.  Aimed at young people under 25, it’s a game set in a 3D virtual city with five main activities where players are set the task of reducing the carbon footprint of an average resident.  As players work their way through the game they will pick up information about Climate Change, and some of the main ways in which everyone is currently contributing to the emissions of the main greenhouse gas (CO2) that causes Climate Change. Climate Challenge A game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office. Connect2Climate Connect 2 Climate comprises of five different applications on the mobile - three mobile games involving different mindsets and psychologies of mobile users, and two mobile learning applications on climate change. The games are being deployed on low-end and low cost handsets to sophisticated high-end devices. Copenhagen Challenge The game "Copenhagen Challenge" … aims to create awareness among school children and youth on issues related to climate change - renewable energy, energy efficiency and reduction in greenhouse gases.Download the English and Hindi versions of "Copenhagen Challenge" game from the links below. Install it on your desktop, play the interesting game, and learn more about Climate Change and related issues. V GAS V GAS aims at making the connections between individual lifestyles and greenhouse gas emissions, gauging personal contributions to global emissions. V GAS will try to help the user to answer the question ‘how does my lifestyle relate to the global problem?’, as well as ‘what options are there to reduce my contribution to the global problem?’ Earthquake in Zipland Help your child cope with the challenges of divorce through a fun and interactive video game, designed specifically for children of divorce and legal separation. Earthquake in Zipland takes your child on an exciting adventure that will enable you to sensitively deal with the psychological effects of divorce on children. (Note: This one cost $29.99, but there is a free demo available.) MiniMonos MiniMonos is a virtual world for children: a place of fun, beauty, discovery, generosity, sustainability and friendship. We created MiniMonos so that children could have a place of their own, a place that allows them to explore and grow without constant pressure to buy stuff. We also wanted them to have a place that embodied core values like sustainability and generosity, without turning those values into a boring lecture. One Hen Interactive activities and games to teach kids about microfinance. This is intended to complement a book on microfinance that currently sells for $12.89 at Amazon.com. The Cuckoo of the Computers "The Cuckoo of computers" consists of two parts that can be used together or separately. On the one hand an animated video presentation, playing with any fear, explains what is a computer and what can serve to. As the second block are the exercises that users need to be overcome that fears. Bonus: It would be hard to argue that the games at Games That Give have a great deal of educational value, but they are free, and the 70% of the revenue that the site collects from ads goes to charity. Have fun. Learn a little. Change the world. Jeff Related posts:5 Learning Games for Climate Change - Blog Action Day26 Learning Games to Change the World7 More Learning Games for Change

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites bloggers across the world to raise awareness about an important issue. This years’ issue is climate change. Mission to Learn has participated in Blog Action Day since it began in 2007. Last year, when the issue was poverty, I posted 5 Games Against Poverty and Hunger. So, in that same vein, here are five learning games for climate change. Climate Challenge A game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office. Connect2Climate Connect 2 Climate comprises of five different applications on the mobile - three mobile games involving different mindsets and psychologies of mobile users, and two mobile learning applications on climate change. The games are being deployed on low-end and low cost handsets to sophisticated high-end devices. Copenhagen Challenge The game "Copenhagen Challenge" … aims to create awareness among school children and youth on issues related to climate change - renewable energy, energy efficiency and reduction in greenhouse gases.Download the English and Hindi versions of "Copenhagen Challenge" game from the links below. Install it on your desktop, play the interesting game, and learn more about Climate Change and related issues. LogiCity LogiCity is a fun interactive computer game with a difference.  Aimed at young people under 25, it’s a game set in a 3D virtual city with five main activities where players are set the task of reducing the carbon footprint of an average resident.  As players work their way through the game they will pick up information about Climate Change, and some of the main ways in which everyone is currently contributing to the emissions of the main greenhouse gas (CO2) that causes Climate Change. V GAS V GAS aims at making the connections between individual lifestyles and greenhouse gas emissions, gauging personal contributions to global emissions. V GAS will try to help the user to answer the question ‘how does my lifestyle relate to the global problem?’, as well as ‘what options are there to reduce my contribution to the global problem?’ Learn and make change, Jeff P.S. - If you are interested in learning games, you may want to check out other posts on serious games here on Mission to Learn, and particularly 26 Learning Games to Change the World. Related posts:12 More Learning Games for Change - and a Bonus5 Games Against Poverty and Hunger26 Learning Games to Change the World

I was reading Hal Crowther‘s recent article on how America is losing its conscience, brain, and heart when I noted mention of a study by the National Civic Literacy Board.  A few Googly-seconds later I wound up at the Civics Quiz, a 33-question online assessment taken from the 2008 Civic Literacy Exam developed by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). I couldn’t resist. Before taking the quiz, I was intrigued to learn that the average score for all 2,508 Americans who took it in 2008 was 49 percent. For college educators the average jumped - by a whopping 6 points - to 55 percent. Yikes! What questions were being asked, and what were the chances I would fare any better? As it turns out, the questions seemed mostly reasonable, and I did do quite a bit better than the 2008 average (though I definitely did not ace the quiz). That got me thinking about why I did better as well as about the value of these types of quizzes. As for why, I’m certain one key reason is simply that I care. I’m sure I picked up some of the factual knowledge tested by the quiz during my schools days, but much of it I know or have retained because I have been involved in a variety of civic activities - from politics to volunteering for nonprofit organizations - since college. My content knowledge is a reflection of experience, motivation, and engagement. (A view the ISI’s nemesis, John Dewey, would have supported.) The history of my coming to have this knowledge - of my learning - is essentially a history of how I came to care. The flip side of the coin - and part of the reason these types of quizzes have some limited value, in my opinion - is that the lack of content knowledge is often evidence of a lack of engagement, or at least a lack of thoughtful engagement. It doesn’t strike me as too much of a stretch to suggest that people who care about the effective functioning of our democracy should possess some basic knowledge of its history, major concepts, and founding principles. By that measure, the ISI has some grounds for sounding the alarm. And so do all the folks who are bemoaning our lack of content knowledge in any number of other areas. But, of course, content does not equal engagement, and neither content nor engagement is sufficient in and of itself for "literacy," in my opinion.  A person could ace this quiz and be declared civically "literate" while doing nothing to contribute positively to civic life (and, of course, remaining entirely ignorant of other areas of civic knowledge not tested by the quiz). Likewise, there are plenty of ways to engage in civic life without mastering the types of content covered by the quiz. Many of these forms of engagement are entirely positive, but as Crowther’s suggests in his article, many are not. In general, I’d say tools like the Civics Quiz have a place in gauging broader societal issues so long as they are recognized as only one tool among many and plenty of critical thinking skills are brought to bear in using them. On the other hand, they can be quite useful in measuring your knowledge as an individual learner and potentially setting some personal learning goals. What do you think? Jeff P.S. - I can’t help but wonder how readers here at Mission to Learn score on the quiz.  If you take the quiz and are willing to share your score (anonymously, of course), please enter it in the poll below. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. No related posts.