![]() ![]() So this is the moment when the financial windfall comes, right? Overtime pay for working on Thanksgiving, at least? “No,” Rawitsch said, laughing, “there was just no cognizance of that. So, then became available to Minnesota schools that were using that mainframe computer, and over the next couple of years it became extremely popular.” And from the kitchen phone, I connected to the MECC computer and typed in line by line the code on the printout.” After Thanksgiving, Rawitsch “started showing it to the staff and they were enthusiastic. … I decided to bring a portable terminal back to the house. … So over Thanksgiving weekend I had a cold and I had nothing else to do. How, then, did this game go from Rawitsch’s desk to millions of classroom computers around the country? “I was hired by MECC in October 1974,” Rawitsch said, “and we had a share library where people could submit programs they had written, and then the staff would decide if they were worthwhile putting in the library. ![]() It was, after all, a one-off classroom exercise for an eighth grade history class, taught by a student teacher. The game that would go on to sell 65 million copies would spend the next three years in a folder in Rawitsch’s bedroom desk. But instead, at the end of that fall semester, Rawitsch, Heinemann, and Dillenberger-those humble and respectful student teachers-printed out the game’s source code from the teletype machine and deleted The Oregon Trail from the school district’s mainframe. This is the moment in the biopic when the creators realize they are sitting on a gold mine, and they convert The Oregon Trail into a commercial product. ![]() … Once I started using this in my classes, I got students coming in after school and lunch period and so forth, just because they wanted to try it many times over.” “There were times when certain groups finished their trip before the bell rang,” Rawitsch remembers, “and so kids … started over for as long as they could. But their enthusiasm for the game didn’t stop there. “All five kids wanted to type, and they wanted to get that done very quickly,” Rawitsch said, “and they soon discovered that that wasn’t the most efficient way to go about this because, invariably, they would get typos.” During their week on The Oregon Trail, each student group got at least one full playthrough finished, with some successfully reaching Oregon. For example, in order to hunt for food, students had to accurately and quickly type either “BANG” or “POW” into the machine, or risk missing their target. This initial version of The Oregon Trail was designed to supplement student knowledge of westward expansion, but it also tested their abilities with resource management, teamwork, and typing. The two math teachers sometimes used the machine in their own classrooms when they weren’t using it, the teletype lived in the school’s janitorial closet. They suggested Rawitsch ditch the paper-and-pencil approach they would help him convert this game into a computer program that could run on his school’s teletype, a monitorless machine connected via the phone line to a mainframe computer in downtown Minneapolis. “In my college work,” Rawitsch said, “I had seen some examples of educational games that were in a box game format … I was kind of fascinated by the idea that this would be something you do in a classroom that would probably be much more interesting to students than just reading about history.” Rawitsch began work on this board game in the apartment he shared with fellow Carleton College student teachers, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, who both taught math and dabbled in computer programming. Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.įor his classes on westward expansion, Rawitsch decided to try something a little safer: a board game with a big map and some toy covered wagons. Rawitsch also worked with a track coach at Jordan Junior High on a mock trial assignment for students that began with someone being shot with a starter pistol-the type of innovative pedagogy that most definitely would get you fired today. For classes on the Civil War, he tried to recount battles for students through songs that he wrote and performed in class with his guitar. “I really wanted to do some things in the classroom that the students were not necessarily used to.” Before developing The Oregon Trail, Rawitsch had attended class with another instructor dressed like Lewis and Clark and attempted to speak and answer questions as the famous explorers. “I was excited and maybe a little naïve,” Rawitsch recalled. Inspired by his teachers at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, Rawitsch decided to pursue new types of pedagogy for his student teacher classes at Jordan Junior High School in Minneapolis. “Back in 1971, there was a lot of activity going on in the world of schools to upgrade curriculum and come up with innovative methods of teaching,” Rawitsch said. ![]()
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