Including his most-recent entry entitled “Osama bin Laden For Kids,” Trevor Owens’ new blog FirstPast explores examples of history and “true stories” in children’s literature. Trevor has some great observations on representation in children’s biographies – and although analyzing a different medium than myself, his work speaks to many of the educational dilemmas I’ve explored in my own research. While Trevor’s entry on bin Laden trashes both “biographies” he critiques, my hunch is that many of the problems I’ve observed in historical/educational computer simulations regarding abstraction exist in the text of children’s literature.
With a limited number of ways to represent “true stories”, the narrative structure in children’s biographies is simplified. We can use abstraction as a concept (as abstract as that sounds..) to begin to account for the inaccuracies that Trevor looks at, and the historical computer simulations I’ve explored. He criticizes these books for the absence of contextualizing information about Osama bin Laden, and starting right at 9/11 which establishes a huge bias in the learner. That contextualization is crucial to overcoming abstraction, both in computer simulations, and in children’s literature. In my own research for my thesis, an alarming percentage of students who played the Oregon Trail computer simulation in schools believe that the Native Americans stole your food in the game. There are thieves in the game, however they’re never identified – just mysterious villains. Without establishing a larger framework of Native American/pioneer relations, abstracted knowledge allows users to connote their own ideas based upon preexisting biases. Hello, abstraction.
There is no possible way for either medium to represent history in it’s entirety, so we’re left with a question: what are responsible ways to establish a framework of ideas for young learners? What happens when ideas are simplified, and how do young learners understand those ideas? Are these inaccuracies due to limitations in the mediums? Are they due to biases of the authors? Are either of these even reasonable questions to ask, or merely academic exercises? Who knows? Perhaps we can explore it together. Trevor’s blog has energized my thoughts on a few related topics that I hope to share in the upcoming weeks.
I should mention that Trevor started FirstPast with his fiance, Marjee. FirstPast is unique and definitely worth adding to your feed reader or blogroll (obligatory plug) – joining the ranks of many other terrific CHNM bloggers, including but not limited to… Dan Cohen, Tom Scheinfeldt, Mills Kelly, Sheila Brennan, Ken Albers, and Ammon Shepherd.
One of the Wild West Roleplaying simulations I’ve studied, Tombstone, now has a web presence. It’s interesting to step back and compare their online community to several others I’ve discussed in previous entries. One of the most surprising things to me is how ambivalent members of these roleplaying communities are of other communities. Yet, they all develop in similar ways. What does this say about online roleplaying? How do members of these communities view the American West? Why is history represented similarly in all of these roleplaying sims? Why is history misrepresented in similar ways as well?
A concerted effort is made on the part of roleplayers to historicize the environment they engage in, and establish a timeline of events that define the activities of the town. In the case of the Wild West MUD Maddock, their website lists a series of “historical events” in the town that are archived roleplaying logs. Additionally, they have a page of town news and current events. These establish the historical narrative that user interactions are based-upon. Both Tombstone and Sigil started town newspapers (the Tombstone Epitaph, and the Sigil Tribune) to achieve similar objectives. With that said, my interviews of participants in these communities indicate that there is practically no knowledge of other Wild West roleplaying communities. The historicizing of events within these virtual worlds is foundational to the growth of these communities, and a feature of historical roleplaying.
Accurately and consistently presenting one’s character is extremely important in these communities. The Maddock website includes a “Who’s Who” of notable “citizens” where you can learn more about members of this “varied population.” The Tombstone website encourages users to join one of three character groups - Outlaws, Natives, and the Army (as if, historically, those were the only three groups that you could be a member of). Sigil would give new citizens, upon arrival, a roleplaying guide to help situation their character within a larger historical framework. What’s interesting is how idealized, homogenous, and “Hollywood” many of the descriptions and representations are. This is a portion of the Sigil Roleplaying Guide that describes the town and frames the interactions of users within the simulation:
You are in the Wild West arriving in a frontier town the setting is the period of 1860-1890. History of this period will assist you. Arizona was not yet a state but a territory of the United States. It was taken firstly in a war with Mexico and then the rest of the land purchased. Thus an old Adobe style church remains. The US Civil war has just taken place and the Union has won. If you are arriving in Sigil you have just lived through this historic moment. Mining is an important industry in this area of Arizona at this stage in time Gold was becoming harder to obtain and Silver becomes the principle product. Copper later takes over later in the period. The Railroad Industry is expanding West towards the pacific causing some parts to boom where the railroad passes through.
I hope to investigate other historical roleplaying simulations in the future (not limited to the Wild West) to see if they follow similar patterns of behavior.
At the Center for History and New Media I’ve had the opportunity to be on the web development team for Omeka, a “simple and flexible system for organizations, cultural institutions, and individuals to manage and publish items, collections, and exhibits on the web.” Omeka is a free and open source web publishing platform that makes it easy to “show your stuff”, be that text, images, video, or any sort of file imaginable. Our tool allows administrators to intuitively create and organize exhibits with these items.
CHNM was recently awarded a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund Omeka’s development, and we’re currently in private beta. If you’re interested in getting on the invitation list to download and test Omeka, email us and we’ll notify you when there are additional spaces. You’ll also get current information about Omeka’s development at the Omeka blog.
One of the exciting things about Omeka is that it;s extensible for ‘oth themes and plugins. Similar to WordPress, Omeka allows administrators to FTP files into the respective directories, then easily activate extended features. There are tons of possibilities with this. Many projects at CHNM were started using earlier versions of Omeka and deal with collecting oral histories, like the September 11th Archive. Omeka has a contribution plugin so that you can perform similar collecting.
With the passing of Roy Rosenzweig, founder and director of CHNM, we’ve set up a site called Thanks, Roy to gather stories and images about him. The site honors his contribution to us all, and is run by Omeka. Whether you knew Roy or not, I’d encourage you to take some time to visit the site. The contributions so far are nothing short of heartfelt and inspiring. Thanks, Roy.
