VOTE FOR OUR PANEL IN THE #SXSWEDU PANEL PICKER!

We need your vote to help us share our role-playing simulation game, iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, with thousands of educators at SXSW Edu 2021. Our session will demonstrate how we link civics learning with social and emotional learning in an exciting format that deeply engages high school students. Audience support helps panels get chosen, so please click here to vote for ours and play a part in activating teachers around student-led civics learning.

Our panel will feature our own Susan Rivers, PhD, iThrive's executive director and chief scientist, along with Mira Cohen, director of education at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and Malcolm Foley, expert educator and counselor at Academy of Scientific Exploration. The presenters have each played a key role in developing and testing the simulation with students and teachers. They will share how this unique simulation experience is enriching and reshaping civics learning.

 The secret sauce in any great civics course is personal relevance. Lives in Balance gives students the chance to access and apply data, knowledge, and skills in real-time as they collaborate, debate, compromise, and negotiate with peers to solve problems based on historical events. When students learn civics through hands-on experiences that also support social and emotional learning, like Lives in Balance, they begin to see themselves as decision-makers and critical members of a well-functioning democracy.

If you are inspired by this vision of experiential civics learning, please pick our panel. Vote here (you'll need to take a few seconds to create an account in order to vote). And if you're curious to learn more about iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, visit here. Hope to see you online next year at SXSW Edu.