As the Presidential election grows closer, students are hearing a lot about deficit spending, the national debt, and balancing the budget. Now they have a chance to be in the government’s seat and come up with their own solutions.
It’s called Budget Hero: Election Edition, and it's an online game that lets players decide how to cut the national debt using various tactics. Players can cut taxes, change defense spending, change the Social Security age, and even apply monetary policies that could decimate the economy. The goal is to make students—and adults—aware of the government’s financial obligations using numbers from the Congressional Budget Office.
eSchool News honored Budget Hero as its Site of the Week back on September 26.
Budget Hero was created by the non-partisan Wilson Center, a research and scholarship organization dedicated as the official memorial to President Woodrow Wilson, that “builds a bridge between academia and public policy.” Diane Tucker leads its Serious Games Initiative.
“I think there is a way to do this so that it helps clear some of the fog around these complex issues. People’s understandings of where their money is going suffers from enormous distortion," she said. “[Budget Hero] is the best kind of teaching tool, a simulation where people can make mistakes and learn from them. They move from passive recipients of information to interactors with that information.”
The game’s homepage says “If you ever wanted to control where your tax dollars go, here’s your chance to decide!” Players are challenged to make the tough decisions to “align your policy choices with your values, navigating your way to a (hopefully) stable financial future beyond the 2012 election.”
The site also offers teachers guidance on using Budget Hero in the classroom, as well as related stories to help the player make choices in the game. You can also check out the testimonials of individuals who have played the game.
Additional ISM resources of interest
ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 8 No. 1 21st Century Learning: Can the Classroom Be a Game Space?
ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 8 No. 1 Gaming and Democracy: Teaching Civic Involvement Online
Additional resources for ISM Consortium Gold Members
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 35 No. 3 The 21st Century School: Curriculum and Technology
