Educational Games for Kids: Proceed With Due Caution
by Kenny Luna, North Babylon, NY on 09. 3.07
When I posted recently about an online game released in New Zealand ostensibly with the intent of teaching kids about responsible energy use and taking proper care of the environment, I pointed out that it appeared to be a great way to teach kids about the concept…. But an astute commenter pointed out that the sponsor of the game, a company called Genesis Energy, has been rated by Greenpeace as the worst offender in that country when it comes to polluting the environment. Within an hour our own Lloyd Alter popped me a quick email linking to yet another story on an “energy game” scheduled to be released this September, but this time by Chevron. The headline read “Chevron Promotes Petroleum… with Clean Energy Game,” and this time it appears that if you even try to create a future without fossil fuels you’ll get an error message that indicates that's just not possible…
Now I’m well aware that the most you can often expect from a duck is a “quack”, and that fossil fuels will have to play a role for some time in our energy mix, but with global warming and peak oil looming together like evil twin ghosts on the horizon we’d better encourage our kids to start imagining a future without them. And while I believe it is reasonable to commend both companies for creating games that include renewable energy sources and help students confront a bit of reality, it’s clear that teachers everywhere had better pay very close attention to who, precisely, is putting out these games. The level of natural bias may wind up successfully undermining the very real message we need to send to children that the only reasonable hope for a sustainable future we have is one where the use of fossil fuels is nothing more than a tiny speck in the rear-view mirror.
That's a really important point you make about kids imagining a future without fossil fuel Kenny. If we can teach our kids that it's a great prospect and totally doable, their minds will contemplate it without the shackling of the conditioning that our generation has been subject to and we'll have better solutions faster.
Either future is renewable/hydrogen, whicih is still science fiction from today's point of view, or nuclear kicks in, which is for some people not an option at all. I live in one European capital with roughly one million citizens, and here comes the reality check, do you expect that my city will by 2030 run solely on renewables and even nuclear, including cars? I am into renewables, but some people who claim to be green advocates I think are loosing touch with reality... :-/
Hi there-
I played the game this morning. It actually allows you to be nearly fossil-fuel free, so let's not knock it too bad. I think it's a great game- and really well thought out. I'm all for teaching everyone (not just kids) to be energy-literate. Anything we do is better than what has been done before (which is almost nothing!).
Kenny, I was quite skeptical when you first praised then criticised ElectroCity without having played it nor properly reviewed it. So I did it myself. You'll be pleased to know that your fears were justified:
http://computingforsustainability.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/electrocity-fears-confirmed/
Note the useful comment there from one of the developers, I'm halfway through writing a comparison with learning outcomes playing battleships (is still in my head though!).
Cheers
SaM