Games: Social Studies

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http://www.shambles.net

Games: Social Studies
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Evoke
http://www.urgentevoke.com/
The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.
EVOKE is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere.
Players who successfully complete ten game challenges in ten weeks will be able to claim their honors: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator
Top players will also earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world
EVOKE was developed by the World Bank Institute, the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group, and directed by alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal.

Anchors Away
http://anchoractivities.wikispaces.com/
Anchors Away is a place where educators can add educational games and activies that students with laptops can do when they have finished their regular classroom assignments. Feel free to request membership to the space and add your own resources. Give this page to your students

Game: Ayiti: The Cost of Life
http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html
Game: 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.

Changemakers
http://www.changemakers.net/
Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public that focuses on the rapidly growing world of social innovation.
It provides solutions and resources needed to help everyone become a changemaker and presents compelling stories that explore the fundamental principles of successful social innovation around the world.
Changemakers is building the world's first global online "open source" community that competes to surface the best social solutions, and then collaborates to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions. Changemakers begins by providing an overarching intellectual framework for collaborative competitions that bring together individual social change initiatives into a more powerful whole.

PeaceMaker
http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/peacemaker/TheGame.htm
PeaceMaker is a one-player game in which the player can choose to take the role of either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President. The player must react to in-game events, from diplomatic negotiations to military attacks, and interact with eight other political leaders and social groups in order to establish a stable resolution to the conflict before his or her term in office ends.
Real-time and Location-Based Events. Videos and pictures from a library of real-time news events are interjected into gameplay. Relevant events are presented on a high-resolution map of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Social Studies Games at Persuasive Technologies
http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/
Social Studies Games at Persuasive Technologies
e.g.
The Howard Dean for Iowa Game - launched at Christmas 2003 to help Dean supporters understand grassroots outreach and to encourage them to participate in pre-caucus campaigning in Iowa or in their local area.
Take Back Illinois - Sponsored by the Illinois GOP, Take Back Illinois challenged players to explore four issues surrounding the 2004 state elections
Activism, The Public Policy Game - Sponsored by the DCCC and released during the height of the 2004 general election, players are challenged to balance six public policy issues with limited time and resources.
.. and more

Food Force
http://www.food-force.com/
"Food Force" is a free online game from the United Nations World Food Program that sends children ages 8 to 13 on six realistic aid missions.
Food Force serves as a classroom tool for teaching about hunger.
From the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world? largest humanitarian agency, Food Force is an educational video game telling the story of a hunger crisis on the fictitious island of Sheylan.
Comprised of 6 mini-games or ?issions? the game takes young players from an initial crisis assessment through to delivery and distribution of food aid, with each sequential mission addressing a particular aspect of this challenging process.
The game has wide cross-curricular appeal (geography, social studies, health, etc.) and can strengthen strategic thinking and decision-making skills. It is an ideal lesson follow-up or homework activity.
Teachers are encouraged to download the game and install it on school computers or burn it onto a CD and make as many copies as required.