Sustainability-Themed Video Games Come to the Classroom | Edutopia.
Sustainability-Themed Video Games Come to the Classroom Educators hope gaming will animate pressing environmental issues. by Brian Libby
From global warming to pollution to vanishing wildlife, children face a world profoundly threatened by environmental catastrophe. Luckily, they have video games to help them through -- sustainability games, to be precise. These are a new generation of educational tools designed to help students learn about environmental issues. Ironically, this learning comes courtesy of technologies that many once believed would sap our attention spans and remove us from the very outside world that now needs rescue. PowerUp, part of IBM's TryScience initiative, is perhaps the most sophisticated of these new video games. The game charges players with saving the imaginary planet Helios from ecological destruction by carrying out missions to supply solar, wind, and water power before severe storms wreak havoc. Students learn engineering and science principles by building solar towers or searching junkyards for parts to repair wind turbines.
