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Teaching History In Schools With Video Games
Joe writes "There's a story about a Massachusetts company, Muzzy Lane Software, creating a Civ-style simulation computer game to teach history to high school and college students. 'Our view isn't that you take the right video game, stick it in a classroom and everything gets better,' Mr. McCool said. 'But with the right tools, this can significantly enhance learning.'"
I really miss playing Oregon Trail on the apple II we had in our classroom.
So get an emulator, that's what I did.
It is amazing playing all the neat games I played as a kid, only now I get 16 colors instead of just 3.
Personally I recommend AppleWin for those using evil err Windows OS. I'm sure there are emulators out there for Linux, but I've been too lazy thus far to find and install them.
After you have an emulator all you need is a ROM for Oregon Trail and then have lots of fun contributing to the total extermination of the Buffalo, Deer, and small rodents across our great nation.
Howdy Doodly Doo!
Anybody want some Toast?
The game used is called Europa Universalis 2 and is something which has consumed hundreds of hours of my playing time over the last couple of years.
It's a strategy game that uses historical events to shape the course of the game. The game has military, economy, diplomacy, colonization and religious aspects to it. There are also hundreds of available countries to play with and the game is very moddable through text file editing.
Also, the game was developped in english which makes it available for a wide audience.
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/news.asp?ArticleID=15Both of those games are made by Paradox and are by far the most evolved historical games I've ever seen. Way beyond Civilization.
The EU2 "Grand Campaign", which covers world history from 1419 to 1820, has something like 200 nations in it and tens of thousands of historical events firing.
Sure, the game can quickly become anachronistic especially if you are a good player focusing on extending your empire, but it still strikes an excellent balance between simulating history and playability. I particularly like the way wars of religions are handled, and the crucial concept of national stability and of the necessity for a Casus Belly to declare war if you do not want to suffer from a drop in stability.
Those two games are the only one I would consider for teaching historical facts (and not simply getting students interested).
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Gold Rush, from Sierra, was a great game where you played a guy leaving his home in Brooklyn to go to California for the gold-rush in 1848. It was a great game that taught about lots of things in 1848.
The game was not totally historically accurate, however it is the type of game where you still learn a lot and the inaccuracies can be easily explained. For example, in the game its your brother who discovers the gold; at the end of the game you and your brother strike it rich. In real life the man who is credited with discovering gold didn't find a second piece of gold. This kind of inaccuracy doesn't take away from learning about how people lived in the 1840s, or how they travelled west.
The major drawback of this game is that, like any other Sierra quest game, it takes hours to beat and the puzzles are usually not obvious. Good historical knowledge doesn't necessarily help you advance in the game. However, these deficiencies can be addressed if the game was re-done with "history-lesson" in mind. Student activities could include writing about how the game deviates from reality, and why they think that is.
However, I think that using games, even one as good as Gold Rush was, as an educational tool is inappropriate in most circumstances. Once in a while, it may be worthwhile, and games that educate as well as entertain are certainly good for a student's spare time, but I think a teacher should be able to keep children engaged in a history lesson without making them play games all day.
I worked at MIT last summer in the Games to Teach project. Several games were in development, one of which was Civ III mod that made it more historically accurate. Unfortunately, that never was able to be created due to funding problems (Microsoft ditched us - slashdot bashing anticipated). Also of note was the beginnings of Revolution (briefly mentioned in the article). I am unaware about its current state, but at the point I left, it was to be a total conversion of Neverwinter Nights.
Most of the games were targeted at a middle school level, where the amount of detail in lessons is normally quite low. In this case, the games would be quite useful. For example, a Civilization style game could help provide an overview of events over a wide period of time, while holding the students attention. Other types of games could be used for more in-depth studies. Revolution, for example, had each student play as a person living in a town in the late 1700s. They would experience scripted events based on the actual causes of the revolutionary war. (this may have changed since last summer)