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A Supreme Court Pioneer, Now Making Her Mark on Video Games

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Sandra Day O’Connor on Critical Thinking

Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Supreme Court justice, talks about the iCivics program and the importance of learning critical thinking at young age.

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Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Supreme Court justice, talks about the iCivics program and the importance of learning critical thinking at young age.CreditCredit...Seneca Women Global

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who turned 86 on Saturday, has many achievements to her name, including serving as a state senator in Arizona and becoming the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, where she served for almost a quarter-century.

Now she can add an accomplishment for the digital era: video game impresario.

Justice O’Connor is behind an animated civics education game called Win the White House, whose latest edition was recently released. The game has been played by more than 250,000 students just this month and is barnstorming its way through middle schools across the United States.

In the game — timed to this election cycle — students take on the role of imaginary presidential candidates who must learn how to compete civilly against opponents with divergent views on issues like immigration and gun control.

That Justice O’Connor would become an interactive game enthusiast may seem unexpected. Until a few years ago, she had never watched a video game — let alone played one.

“I was one of the uneducated adults,” she joked in a recent telephone interview from her home in Phoenix. Speaking of the learning objective of Win the White House, she explained, “We have to have a system that allows young people to approach problem solving from many different viewpoints.”

Justice O’Connor became involved in digital games after retiring from the Supreme Court in 2006. She started iCivics, a nonprofit civics education group, in 2009.

The group has since released 19 free online games, along with accompanying lesson plans, with the idea of making civics education less about rote learning and more about giving middle school students an animated glimpse into how different branches of government and the Constitution work. About 3.2 million students played iCivics games last year, the group said.

Justice O’Connor is getting colleagues involved in the effort as well. Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined iCivics’ governing board last November.

In a phone interview on Friday, Justice Sotomayor said she thought it was “brilliant of Justice O’Connor to realize that computer games could be a very successful way to interest kids in civics education.” Justice Sotomayor, who said she developed an early interest in law after watching the “Perry Mason” television show, said she had incorporated iCivics into her own frequent visits to schools, where she encourages students to learn how government works and to get involved in their communities.

“I thought this was really in keeping with my message to kids about how laws affect you every single day,” Justice Sotomayor said, adding that she has played the games. “They’re fun. I’ve challenged my clerks to play them to see how they do.”

The involvement of the two justices in digital educational games underscores a growing belief among educators that interactive tools may improve students’ engagement in their own learning. In January, Microsoft introduced an educational version of Minecraft, the popular game in which players use blocks to construct elaborate virtual worlds. Last fall, Google unveiled Expeditions, a virtual reality system for classroom use that takes students on simulated field trips around the world.

Teachers who have used Win the White House said the game helped their students experience and understand the complicated trade-offs that candidates often make.

Anna Nelson, assistant principal at Bronx Latin, a high school in New York City, recently divided her 12th-grade honors civics class into Democratic and Republican teams and assigned them to play the game. Along the way, her students learned the difference between conservative and liberal political beliefs, and that candidates had to stick to the platforms they had chosen, she said. They also learned to select running mates from different backgrounds to broaden their appeal with voters.

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Sandra Day O’Connor, a retired Supreme Court justice, is behind an educational video game called Win the White House.Credit...Bill Jenne

“It taught them so many things in one short simulation,” Ms. Nelson said. Now, when they come to class, they want to discuss new developments in the actual presidential primaries with her, she said.

Justice Sotomayor suggested parents play the games with their children as well. “Do you know how many adults don’t know anything about civics?” she said.

Justice O’Connor said she started iCivics out of concern that many schools had abandoned the idea of teaching students to become engaged citizens. She said she worried that students would not grow up to become good leaders, or even active voters, if they did not understand, say, the importance of an independent judiciary or their right to due process.

“A quarter of students cannot demonstrate a proficient knowledge of how our government works,” Justice O’Connor said, while “their knowledge of TV shows like ‘American Idol’ is way up there.”

She said she began to seriously investigate the idea of educational games after consulting with James Gee, a professor of literacy studies at Arizona State University and the author of a book titled “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.”

“I explained to her that games were not about shooting people,” Professor Gee said. “They were about problem solving.”

Filament Games, a learning games company in Madison, Wis., one of whose founders is a former student of Professor Gee, designed the games for iCivics, which is based in Cambridge, Mass. Justice O’Connor’s own passions and priorities were central to the development of a number of the games — among them Supreme Decision, in which students take on the role of an imaginary Supreme Court justice who must cast the deciding vote in a case.

In one of the most popular iCivics games, called Do I Have a Right?, students run a fictional constitutional law firm, taking on clients, figuring out which rights apply to them and arguing their cases. Although the game could not have anticipated recent contentious issues like the iPhone privacy fight between Apple and the F.B.I., it covers topics that may give students insights into current events or their own experiences.

“I was struck that many students did not know their rights,” said Danny O’Sullivan, a 17-year-old high school senior in Washington. The son of one of Justice O’Connor’s former clerks, he helped test the iCivics game with students at a different local high school. “They didn’t know that if a cop stopped them and searched them without a reason, it was illegal,” he said.

The game also has playful elements. Students who collect enough points to buy a virtual coffee maker for their imaginary law firm will find that the game speeds up, in a nod to the availability of virtual caffeine.

Justice O’Connor said it was important for the games to be inclusive and nonpartisan.

Students who play Win the White House may choose avatars, male or female; blond or brunet; goateed or clean-shaven; Democratic or Republican; beige or brown. But whether players decide to support, say, gun rights or gun control, the game provides neutral explanations of each stance.

Justice O’Connor will go down in the annals of American history for being the FWOTSC — her nickname for First Woman on the Supreme Court — not to mention the swing vote in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that effectively settled the contested 2000 presidential election. But these days, she likes to say her efforts to encourage students to understand and participate in government represent her most important legacy.

When she attended a recent reunion of her former clerks, she insisted that they bring laptops so she and their children — she calls them the grandclerks — could play iCivics games together.

“Government isn’t handed down in the genes,” Justice O’Connor said. “It has to be taught through every generation.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trailblazing Justice Now Has Games on Docket. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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