Our Courts is the website started by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to help students learn about civics. They’ve had some decent materials on the site for awhile. In fact, I had put links to some of them on The Best Sites To Learn About The U.S. Supreme Court.  For an extremely long time, they’ve been hyping (both online and in newspaper articles)  a game that were going to add to the site.  It was just unveiled — Supreme Decision: Ben’s T-Shirt.

I appreciate Justice O’Connor’s efforts, but I have to say that it gives fodder to Scott McLeod’s recent post Do Most Educational Games Suck?

I ordinarily don’t critique a free online educational game like this, but it’s been hyped for so long that it’s a disappointment.  It’s a good topic — student free speech — but it’s pretty involved and it’s difficult for me to see students getting very engaged by it.

It’s nice that it provides audio support for the text, which improves its accessiblity for English Language Learners.

I may be wrong on this judgment and, if so, it won’t be the first time.  I’d be interested in hearing if others think differently.