Civics via Computers

I just had to post about this, even though at first it didn't seem to pertain to educational psychology directly (though certainly to educational policy and philosophy). This is an article about former Justice O'Connor's role in developing a website intended to teach aspects of the American Judicial system. She makes a scary point that civics (which was poorly taught in all of my experience - I learned more from Tim Russert than my high school government class) is getting squeezed out of school.

It is towards the end of the article where I saw a connection to ed. psych. and our recent classes on constructivism. One of the planned activities that students can engage in on the website will be to form an argument related to constitutional issues. They can go up against the computer, or other students on the site. The following quote from O'Connor gets right to the constructivist theory underlying such an activity:

“I believe that when we learn something, a principle or concept, by doing, by having it happen to us, which you can do by that medium of a computer, and you exercise it and you make an argument and you learn, ‘Oh yes, that’s an argument that prevails,’ you learn by doing.”

Civics is a subject that is ripe with opportunities for authentic tasks. I mean, what is more authentic than learning how to navigate and understand our government?