iCivics

About iCivics

iCivics is a free website that was founded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Supreme Court justice. It focuses on topics that are related to civics and government function. There are a couple of purposes of iCivics. You can sign up as a teacher or a student. I signed up as a teacher, so everything I was seeing is from the teacher's perspective. There are lesson plans and activity ideas for teachers. There are also several activities or games for students to complete on a variety of topics, which teachers also have access to. Underneath the games is the estimated time that it takes to play the game; this is beneficial for planning purposes. When you play the games you get points. After earning points, you can choose to spend those points voting for a choice on impact project. Every three months, iCivics donates money to the impact project with the highest number of points.


Using it in the classroom

In Virginia, students will at some points, have to take Civics and US Government. A lot of these activities could really be used in either class depending upon the curriculum. If I was teaching a government class about the Supreme Court, there are several resources from iCivics that I could use. Check out my Screencast to see how I would look for Supreme Court related activities.


If you want to log in as a student you can sign up and use my class code: Rehnquist11543.
This is what it looks like after you have registered as a student and used the class code:

If you don't want to register you can still try the game out here!

The downside

While iCivics is an awesome tool, it is hard to access from a phone. There isn't an app version, though hopefully they will create one soon! I also tried navigating the site on my phone, and it wasn't very user friendly. While you could select activities, they wouldn't always load. That being said, if you're doing activities with iCivics in the classroom, it's best that every student has a laptop or computer access.


Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 3, 2018 at 12:52 PM

    Great post! The video was a good touch. Really cool website, I can see myself trying this out and using it for lessons. Thanks for the cool new tool

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 7, 2018 at 2:19 AM

    Hi Katie,

    What a great resource! I have never heard of this. It's really cool that they donate money to the project with the most points. That gives kids some buy-in. I like the screencast you did. It helps give the reader a better feel for how to use the game.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Heather

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 10, 2018 at 11:00 AM

      I thought that was really cool as well! Thanks for your comments!

      Delete
  3. Rod CarnillDecember 9, 2018 at 1:34 PM

    I will be sharing this resource out to the instructional tech coaches in the district as well as the social studies lead teachers. Great explanation of the how to make the most of the resource.

    ReplyDelete

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