Thursday, February 4, 2010
You have died of dysentery....
To start this off, I need to say that I LOVE the Oregon Trail CD Rom game. I used to play it all the time and was especially good at hunting. I wish I could find the original game, not the recent one. Though I do agree with some of the points from this article, I am still going to be biased because of how much I love this game. One of the article's main points is that "without acknowledging it, the Oregon Trail maneuvers, students into thinking and acting as if they were all males". I can see why they would make this quote but I do believe that the majority of people who were making the journey of the Oregon Trail were white men. I know that there are some really good points in this article, but I do believe they took it a little far. I would say that the main point the main point I agree with in this article is that "CD ROMS are not teacher substitutes". Though we played quite a bit in elementary school, I would not say that we played it all the time while in the computer lab. It was one of our options for free time once we had finished our assignment or task. A lot of teachers would probably use it more as a "substitute" but I believe, like the author, that the teachers need to do the teaching. Yes, it is a fun game and you do learn things, but it should not be the main source of information on the Oregon Trail and the other topics that encompass that. Though there are a few good points to this article, I think the author went a little too far.
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Linds - I totally agree with this blog! It was difficult to hear Bigelow rip apart The Oregon Trail game. I liked the point you made about how the article focused the game being "all about men". This was something I noticed as well and also something I had a hard time swallowing. So what if there are a lot of white men in the game? Isn't that who made the journey across the trail? I also felt this way about Bigelow's description of the role women played. He seemed disgusted that women in the game were seen cooking and cleaning but in fact that was their job! I felt as though he was searching for things he disliked about the game. I like your point about using the games as a partner to teaching students the real facts.
ReplyDeleteI, too, agree with your blog Lindsey.
ReplyDeleteI think we all have so many fond memories of The Oregon Trail that it is hard to see flaws with the game at all. I completely agree that Bigelow went overboard with his arguments. Many of them may have been valid, had they not been so extreme in the article.
In regards to teaching, of course putting students in front of computers to play games is not going to do job of teaching, nor learning. I thought that his idea of having a real-life simulation of the oregon trail was a great idea. In my practicum last spring, the second grade class got really into this. They had "wagon teams" of four people and they each had character roles. Every day, they'd be presented with a challenge or problem to solve where they had to make decisions about where to go, what to bring, things to trade, etc. They really enjoyed discussing together how to resolve each problem that came up based on their character's needs. I guess this didn't really take into account the needs of other people, like the Native Americans for example.
It seemed like a very engaging way to learn about the Oregon Trail in class.
Linds-
ReplyDeleteI, too loveddd the game, and was good at hunting as well! I think that Bigelow did go overboard, but he did make some good points. I think that you were right to say that teachers need to not use this game as a substitute, or the only way to inform children of the Oregon Trail. However, I remember that when I was younger, we actually had a unit on the Oregon Trail, the game was just something extra for us to do in our free-time. We got to do a lot of hands-on activities, as well as, do our own research. I do know a lot of schools/teachers that just use the game to teach students about it, and that is not right.
Good blog girl! <3
Yeah, it was definitely hard to hear my favorite childhood game getting ripped on. I also found that the article was very extreme, but at the same time, there were a lot of good points about the role of teachers when deciding what to expose their students to. That being said, I agree with you when you talked about the importance of teachers not using a CD-ROM as a substitution for teaching. Also, teachers should be critical of what they bring into the classroom and they should fully explore it and understand it. But I’m definitely with you on the Oregon Trail!
ReplyDeleteLindsey,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your blog! I loved the Oregon trail game growing up, and feel that I too might be a little biased because of that. Even still, I felt that the author was a little bit harsh in this article. Its almost as if he feels that the makers of the game were trying to portray women, Native Americans and African Americans in a negative light ON PURPOSE. I guess I can see where he thinks that maybe women are slightly misrepresented, and that the game misrepresents how much the Oregon trail effected Native Americans. But I really don't think that its too far off. I think as long as teachers use this game as a supplement, and make sure students understand the history of the oregon trail, it is a fine tool to use.
Lindsey,
ReplyDeleteI had similar views about the article as you. I enjoyed the game growing up and never thought about how i was being subjected to biases to include sexism, racism, or anything of that sort. I just enjoyed playing and learning a bit about the Oregon Trail along the way. The author made some good points but in all honesty, I think the author overreacted a bit. As long as these games aren't used as a substitute for teaching and instead are utilized in free time or at home and not during precious classtime, there is nothing wrong with them.