Gaming the Past

This is a reprint of my post at PlayThePast from March 2012. This essay generated some insightful comments, for which see http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2594

What simulation games do best as interpretations is present the past in terms of problem spaces. This is a concept I have co-opted from games and learning theorists (most notably Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire) for use in thinking about how we teach and learn about the past and use simulation games. I have an article in the works that addresses  some aspects of this, but I want to test these ideas out in the meantime. I am also inspired by the recent posts from Trevor and Rebecca and the enthusiastic feedback they generated and wanted to make some sense of that in relation to my work.  Any feedback would be most welcome.

I.

The concept of problem space is a highly useful tool for studying historical simulations, teaching history, and using the former to help in the latter.  Simulation games are interpretations of the past designed as problem spaces. A problem space, at least as I currently define it, has the following features:
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(A republication of my original article at PlayThePast )

Routledge released my new book, Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History May 16th.  I’m very excited for its release as, to my knowledge, it is the only book of its kind anywhere: a practical guidebook taking history and social studies teachers through all the steps of designing and implementing lessons and units using simulation games: selecting games, planning lessons, managing classes, and designing activities and assessments. Although its core audience is high school history teachers, educators at the middle school and college level, will, I believe, find the book useful. Play the Past was kind enough to ask me to spread the word on their site, and so, I’ll take the space to explain how I got to Gaming the Past and why it’s important.
I began teaching high school history immediately after I finished my Ph.D. at Ohio State (2000). In those days I was teaching at a boarding school for boys who had not yet succeeded at academics. Simulations of the pen-and-paper variety quickly became part of my repertoire. Somehow there was a world of difference between asking students to list the features of Soviet propaganda in the early years and having them pretend to be Soviet propaganda ministers designing their own campaign. I was dabbling back then (I like to call it experimenting now), but I found that simulations gripped students in a way few other instructional strategies could. When I relocated to Cincinnati Country Day School in 2002, a new world opened for me. Country Day was the first independent school (probably the first school) to implement a 1-to-1 laptop program for its students, grades 5-12. Equally as important, it’s simply an amazing place built on a terrific student body and faculty. Over the next few years I explored the effective use of computers in the classroom as research and note-taking tools, learning from my colleagues and trying out my own ideas. I continued to play with tabletop simulations along the way and began to experiment with video games, first using Civilization III in the class, then Rome: Total War.
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After getting a good reception from various readers to an article I wrote for the Playing with Technology in History conference last year, I decided to post the article here. It’s titled Simulation Games and the Study of the Past: Classroom Guidelines and hints at some of what will be in Gaming the Past. Read it here.