Branches+of+Power+(Scott)

Description:
Branches of Power lets you play all three branches of government, collectively charged to build new laws while simultaneously keeping your constituents happy. As President, you get to choose issues you think are important and rally the people around them by holding press conferences to get ideas on the agenda. As a legislator, craft bills around your constituents' values. You are able to hold town hall meetings to get an idea of what your constituents are thinking. Once you have the support around a particular idea, you convene the Legislature to debate and form a bill. Once a bill is formulated, which must pass by a 50% majority, it is sent to the President. Once on the President's desk he can either sign or veto the bill. Every once in awhile a lawsuit will try to challenge the bill just passed. As a Justice, uphold the law or strike down unconstitutional legislation. Only through using all three branches cooperatively can you construct towering laws upon the issue foundations that dot the landscape. The challenge is you must complete 10 new laws within a 30 minute time limit. Below is a video.

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Learning involved:
As a social studies teacher I found this game quite interesting. I feel this would be a good game for students in the junior high or maybe high school level. I do feel there would need to be a little prior knowledge that the students would need to know prior to playing the game. However, the instructions are quite good at describing how to play. Students would learn, if they did not know already, what the three branches of government do and how they do them. As President, they learn how to get an idea notices and become part of the national discussion. By holding press conferences, you are able to answer questions from citizens regarding particular issues. The only choices are a simple "yes" or "no", but you will know if you get the question wrong, as the game will tell you. There is immediate praise when you get something right. Also, the students will learn which issue are part of the national agenda and what about those issues are important by the questions that are asked. As the legislature, you will learn about town hall meetings. You are able to speak with your constituents and either agree or disagree with their concerns about a particular issue. Here again, you know immediately either you said the right thing by how the crowd reacts to your answers. Lastly, as a judge on the Supreme court, you decide whether the bill is constitutional or not. There are opportunities for the legislature to put ideas in a bill that are unconstitutional so as a student you will learn what is and is not constitutional when the bill goes in front of the Supreme Court. I feel one of the key parts of the game that is learned are the different values that you must pick for you legislature and what issues as President you will focus on. Below is a photo of the values that you can choose to give your avatar.

I think that gives students a really good idea of what real Senators and Representatives value. Also as President you must choose three things to focus your administration on.



Limiting the President to only three issues brings out the reality of the scope of what a President can truly focus on in a given term.

Teaching Involved:
The game does an extremely good job at teaching the concepts and strategies. First, there is a sections you can click before you play that lays out the concept of the games and most of the instructions. Second before you play you can go through the Tutorial (which I chose not to do) which will walk you through step by step what exactly you need to do in order to be successful at the game. Lastly, as you play there is still a lot of guidance that is given to keep you focused and on track. Below is an example of what periodically pops up as you are playing the game. Also, whenever you go into a new concept of the game these short guidance/helps pages will pop up as well. You can turn this off to make the game a little more difficult.

In addition, at a click away you can view a map with will display all the issues that you are working towards becoming law and the progress of each.



Feedback in this game is exceptional in my opinion. When you hold a press conference and also in the town hall meetings you are given immediate feedback to the way you answer the questions you are asked. If your constituents agree with you then more support is garnered toward the issue you are dealing with. If you do not answer the questions correctly, you will not be able to gain support for the issue and will not be able to move into the legislature to become a bill. Also, while in session you must choose to put ideas on the bill that will gain a majority of support by the other legislatures. If you do not put popular ideas on the bill you will not be able to get it passed and signed into law by the President. As President, you are also given immediate feedback when you sign a popular or unpopular bill into law. Or if you veto a bill that was popular. The game also provides you with an idea of what will happen if you do a certain action by showing you the re-election probability by signing or not signing a particular bill.

Once your 30 minutes is up, you are given awards and points based on the amount of bills you actually made into law. The first time I tried, I got 7 out of 10 issues made into law. That gave me 3600 points. What do you do with these points? The cool thing is you can donate your points ([|Impact Competition]) that you earned while playing games towards a cause that you care about. Every three months, the creators of the games will tally the points and reward the winning cause with a "substantial prize". Below is an idea of the causes you can donate your points towards.

You can click on each cause to learn more and to learn what reward they will earn if they win the competition. Pretty amazing stuff.

Principles of Learning:

 * Active, Critical Learning Principle:** This is definitely not passive learning. The player has to think critically about the decisions he/she is making about what to put in bills and whether they are popular and constitutional or not.


 * Semiotic Domains Principle:** The player has to learn basic ideas and words about what it takes for an issue to move from an idea into a law.


 * Psychosocial Moratorium Principle:** There are many actions that a player can make that have little risk in the real world.


 * Identity Principle:** The player has to make choices like which values they will take on as a legislature and what issues to focus on as the President and also the player must remain true to those values during the game in order to win over constituents and make bills into law.


 * Self Knowledge Principle:** As a player make decisions about what values they take on and what ideas to put into bills they must think about those same things and how they affect the real world.

Overall Reflections:
I love this game. Ok. So I am a Social Studies nerd and I love politics but I feel the game is able to teach important civic concepts in a well structured manner. Especially in a world today where just over [|1/3 of our population] can even name the three branches of government but have no problem naming the three stooges, I feel this game will go a long way in making those numbers better. I feel this game would be best used at the junior high level before a unit on the three branches of government as an introduction and also after as a measure of how much was learned during the unit. This also would be a good game for many adults to play in order to get more people interested in the functions of government and the importance of staying informed.