By Bisola Adeyemo
Games can be a powerful way to teach, persuade, or raise awareness about important topics that young people particularly children should care about, such as climate change, social justice, or civic issues.
Technology has a trick. Environmental education can be taken out of musty textbooks and turned into interactive games. Like any other strategy game, kids can immediately see the environmental problems and design solutions on their own.
The learning opportunities found in well-designed games are very different from textbooks or videos; rather than content to be “absorbed,” they provide a model of reality or a system of interconnected parts that children can interact and play with.
Games can tackle complex topics like climate change and sustainability uniquely in more understandable and accessible ways, as well as aim to change student attitudes and behaviors.
Here are some free online games that teach children about the environment and their role in it.
1. Clim’Way [Broken URL Removed]
What is it about? It is an excellent educative game that helps to combat climate change and teaches more about climate change.
A player will face the problem of greenhouse gas emissions on three fronts:
A) Decrease the use of energy by 40 percent.
B) Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent.
C) Increase the share of renewable energy by 60 percent.
2. Windfall: This teaches a lot about renewable wind energy by building a wind farm.
By 2030, wind energy could meet 30 percent of all electricity demand in the country. Even though it’s not as cool as a solar panel in space.
3. Recycle City. This game considers e-waste. It teaches how children can help pct the environment. Recycle City games can sensitize child games early to the need for reusing waste. Play the game to see how everyday decisions waste reduces waste, games, and even help to save money at home, at work, and around the neighborhood.
4. Lifeboat to Mars. As the name says, is about the Red Planet. But it is also a clean slate that teaches kids about the origins of an ecosystem and how evolutionary biology can transform a rock into a living globe. In this biology simulation game, kids are tasked with piloting a spaceship with a cargo of microbes and a variety of plants and animals needed to start an ecosystem.
5. Profit Seed: Sustainable farming and dangers of ggamesically modified organisms (GMOs).
This game might be more suitable for older kids as they begin to break down the complex issues around seed patents and GMOs. The players become farmers and attempt to plant traditional heirloom seeds while attempting to stop the spread of GMO seeds as they into their plots.
The dangers of GMO seeds? If enough GMO seeds land in the field and germinate, the lawyer from an agribusiness corporation can sue the farmer and take his land. So, control the wind with your mouse and stop rogue seeds from drifting on your land.
6. The Mission Migration: This game lays bare the threat of human activity to the migration of birds. The game also tries to highlight the role of our positive environmental choices on successful bird migration.