Newbie

So I’ve always heard a lot about the game, “The Oregon Trail.” It came a little too late for me to play it in school (well, a lot too late – we didn’t have computers in my school, we had cave paintings). The other day, I got curious enough to look up “The Oregon Trail” at Wikipedia:

“An entire generation of schoolchildren grew up on the various incarnations of The Oregon Trail. Thus, it has entered popular culture. Characters suddenly dying of a disease, such as cholera and dysentery, or drowning while trying to ford across a river are plot aspects that are fondly remembered.”

Cholera, dysentery and drowning are “fondly remembered”??!!

I guess nostalgia can make anything sound good.

As I understand it, the first versions of the game were of their time, meaning that they were simple (as you can see in this screen grab from… April 25, 1848!):

Kids loved this game. And it taught them a lot about American history. And it suggests that you don’t necessarily need a load of bells and whistles to make a compelling game, just exciting game play that makes players want to keep playing and playing.

So contemplating all of this led me to think about a few other things, foremost among them, “exploring.” I’ve written a lot about us old folks having to be brave as we face the new world of technology. It’s easy to feel stupid when we try new things (and it’s especially easy when those new things are easily mastered by most eight-year-olds!). But having courage in the face of embarrassment is the only way to learn things. It’s how kids learn at school. And it’s how grown-ups learn at work. And it’s how all of us learn at home. We’ve got to be explorers….

Kids are quite naturally explorers, while we adults are a little more careful.

But one thing that definitely makes it easier to explore is if you’ve got some company along the way.

I’m lucky enough to work with a group of folks on the Learning Games to Go project who are really, really brave. They’re at the forefront of a movement to bring cool, effective learning games into classrooms around the country. And if this plan of theirs works, it will make a huge impact on how teachers teach and how students learn. And it will make things better.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually been involved with something that was truly “new” in my adult life… until now. I’ve always marched along trails that had already been made by others. It’s so exciting to be an explorer!

I just hope none of us gets cholera….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 10:55 am and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.