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Shaping Our Own History: The Student Lens
A CD-ROM like The Oregon Trail essentially leaves students to collect the information throughout the game. Furthermore, students are implicitly asked to make assumptions about theinformation they encounter. Specifically, students are asked to do things like react to the deaths of members of their party, ultimately creating their own version of historical events.
A student-named tombstone from the first Oregon Trail.
(Image courtesy of Gamespot. Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved.)
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Reactions to Death
At the beginning of the game, students are asked to name the five members of their wagon party. In all but the rarest of cases, members of the party become ill or die along the way, and students are provided with the opportunity to inscribe an epitaph upon their tombstones. “Although it is a children’s video game,” a reviewer notes, “[ The Oregon Trail] is by no means sugar-coated; death and disease are common occurrences” (1). |
However, it is arguable that the death of travelersimparted a sense of the seriousness of the trail for the students who played the game. As one elementary-aged software tester notes, “You keep dying all the time…it’s incredibly annoying” (2). Another reviewer recalls how he would name his wagon party after his friends, and then “purposefully set the rations to meager…as I laughed my best evil laugh as I watched all my friends get horrible diseases” (3). Finally, the tombstone feature “was often abused by schoolchildren to display swear words, insults, or puns” (4). |
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Image Courtesy of Busted Tees. Copyright 2005, All Rights Reserved. |
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In the game, student pioneers are "transported" back to 1848.
(Image courtesy of Gamespot. Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved.) |
Creating History
For students, the game becomes--at least mentally--synonumous with those of an actual pioneer navigating the trail. Bill Burgoyne uses the term “prosthetic memory” to describe this phenomenon, in which “mass cultural technologies” like video games and CD-ROMs, enable students "individuals to experience, as if they were memories, events through which they themselves did not live” (5). |
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The benefits of these “prosthetic memories” are certainly evident; in this case, they might cause the student to gain a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural significance of the Oregon Trail. However, there are potential hazards to such memories as well. Burgoyne points out that these memories can alter how original events are perceived in a way that becomes “prosthetically enhanced” (6). The game, then, gives students a chance to draw their own conclusions about priorities and life on the trail in a way that ultimately shapes their memory and feeling of authority about the event itself.
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"I was obsessed with [the Oregon Trail] at school. You could choose to play outside for recess or stay inside to play the Game. I definitely learned from the prospective of a pioneer. As a little kid, you get so wrapped up in the show you really believe it’s you and your family I was quite intrigued by all the illnesses everyone got. And the hunting. I liked the hunting. "
Alyson, senior
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