Teaching and Learning History with Technology Kevin Kee, Editor

Pastplay Digital Humanities The Digital Humanities series provides a forum for ground- breaking and benchmark work in digital humanities, lying at the intersections of computers and the disciplines of arts and humanities, library and information science, media and communications studies, and cultural studies. Series Editors: Julie Thompson Klein, Wayne State University Tara McPherson, University of Southern California Paul Conway, University of Michigan Teaching History in the Digital Age T. Mills Kelly Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, Editors Writing History in the Digital Age Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, Editors Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology Kevin Kee, Editor diGitalculturebooks, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press, is dedicated to publishing work in new media studies and the emerging field of digital humanities. Pastplay Teaching and Learning History with Technology Kevin Kee, Editor The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright © by Kevin Kee 2014 Some rights reserved This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2017 2016 2015 2014 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/dh.12544152.0001.001 ISBN 978-0-472-11937-0 (cloth: alk paper) ISBN 978-0-472-03595-3 (paper: alk paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12048-2 (e-book) This book has been published with the financial support of the Canada Research Chairs program, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Strategic Knowledge Clusters Grants program. This volume is the second major publication of The History Education Network/Histoire et éducation en réseau (THEN/HiER). the history education network THENhistoire et éducationH enER réseau Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Teaching and Learning hisTory 1. What Has Mystery Got to Do with It? 23 Ruth Sandwell and John Sutton Lutz 2. “Why can’t you just tell us?” Learning Canadian History with the Virtual Historian 43 Stéphane Lévesque 3. Interactive Worlds as Educational Tools for Understanding Arctic Life 66 Richard Levy and Peter Dawson 4. Tecumseh Lies Here: Goals and Challenges for a Pervasive History Game in Progress 87 Timothy Compeau and Robert MacDougall PLayfuLLy 5. The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around; or What You Do with a Million Books 111 Stephen Ramsay 6. Abort, Retry, Pass, Fail: Games as Teaching Tools 121 Sean Gouglas, Mihaela Ilovan, Shannon Lucky, and Silvia Russell 7. Ludic Algorithms 139 Bethany Nowviskie vi / Contents WiTh TechnoLogy 8. Making and Playing with Models: Using Rapid Prototyping to Explore the History and Technology of Stage Magic 175 William J. Turkel and Devon Elliott 9. Contests for Meaning: Playing King Philip’s War in the Twenty-First Century 198 Matthew Kirschenbaum 10. Rolling Your Own: On Modding Commercial Games for Educational Goals 214 Shawn Graham 11. Simulation Games and the Study of the Past: Classroom Guidelines 228 Jeremiah McCall By BuiLding 12. Playing into the Past: Reconsidering the Educational Promise of Public History Exhibits 257 Brenda Trofanenko 13. Teaching History in an Age of Pervasive Computing: The Case for Games in the High School and Undergraduate Classroom 270 Kevin Kee and Shawn Graham 14. Victorian SimCities: Playful Technology on Google Earth 292 Patrick Dunae and John Sutton Lutz 15. True Facts or False Facts—Which Are More Authentic? 309 T. Mills Kelly Afterword 329 Kevin Kee Contributors 331 Index 336 Acknowledgments “Community, relationship, play.” The April 2010 symposium from which this book emerged was a testament to the words with which contributor Ste- phen Ramsay closes his chapter. Written before we met, his maxim became the catchphrase of our meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada. Credit for that spirit is due to the symposium participants, who became (along with their co-authors) the contributors to this volume. Thanks to Timothy Com- peau, Patrick Dunae, Devon Elliott, Sean Gouglas, Shawn Graham, T. Mills Kelly, Stéphane Lévesque, Richard Levy, John Sutton Lutz, Robert Mac- Dougall, Jeremiah McCall, Bethany Nowviskie, Stephen Ramsay, Geoffrey Rockwell, Ruth Sandwell, Brenda Trofanenko, and William J. Turkel. The two days we spent together were one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career. I am especially indebted to William J. Turkel, who helped me conceive of the Pastplay project, and then pushed it beyond its initial scope. This book is broader and deeper as a result of his imagination and wisdom. Matthew Kirschenbaum, who was unable to attend the symposium, later added an important dimension to our collection with his chapter on history and board games. Several months after the meeting, Geoffrey Rockwell and I met to conceptualize the introduction. He was characteristically insightful and generous, and our fruitful collaboration was a fitting coda to the project. The gifted graduate students with whom I have had the pleasure of work- ing with played an important role from beginning to end. Tom Mitrovic helped organize the initial gathering; as the symposium drew to a close, he received the thanks he deserved. “It was,” he was told on several occa- sions, “the best meeting that I’ve ever attended.” Nicki Darbyson, Emily Nolan, and Spencer Roberts supported the editing; and Spencer organized the index, with some playful technology and a lot of elbow grease. Thanks as well to the anonymous reviewers whose careful appraisal underscored the need for this book, and led to the improvement of its contents. The University of Michigan Press, and specifically the “digitalculturebooks” imprint, was the ideal destination for our book. Many thanks to then-Editor- in-Chief Thomas Dwyer, who agreed to publishPastlpay ; and Editorial Assis- tant Christopher Dreyer, who shepherded it to completion. At BookComp, Nicholle Lutz expertly guided me through the final editorial process. vii viii / Acknowledgments Pastplay would not have been possible without the financial support of The History Education Network/Histoire et éducation en réseau (THEN/ HiER). Led by Penney Clark at the University of British Columbia, THEN/ HiER is the first pan-Canadian organization devoted to promoting and improving history teaching and learning by bringing together the multiple and varied constituencies involved in history education. Penney and my fellow THEN/HiER board members have been enthusiastic supporters of the project from the beginning, and I am honored that Pastplay is THEN/ HiER’s second major publication. Along with Penney, I gratefully acknowl- edge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and its Strategic Knowledge Clusters Program which has funded THEN/HiER, and sub-projects such as this book. I also appreciate the support of the Canada Research Chairs program, and Brock University, both of which provided me with the time and funds to bring Pastplay to completion. At home, Anne-Marie, Jacob, and Kathleen personify playfulness. They do not share my interest in its research, they simply make it happen. Finally this book is dedicated to the community of researchers, educators, practi- tioners, and students who are exploring imaginative, engaging ways to use new tools and environments to analyze and express history. I look forward to what emerges next from our sandbox. Introduction Kevin Kee “I think you’ve missed your audience.” The speaker was a digital humanities colleague, and an amiable guy. His intent was to broker a peace, and perhaps save me from myself. I had been invited to present to a group of scholars and graduate students. All were humanists, some historians, and all for the most part interested in digital technology. The conference had been impec- cably organized, the graduate students passionate and interested, and the host a paragon of hospitality. Following dinner with the organizers the night before, I had phoned home to say that it had been one of the most enjoyable social evenings I had spent with a group of strangers. But in the minutes following my presentation, that collegiality seemed to be evaporating. My talk had outlined a new vision for the use of technology in history teaching and research, inspired by the scholars whose chapters can be found in the pages that follow. When my presentation ended, the room erupted. On one side were those who welcomed my call for a change in how we conceptualize and practice our work—as historians in particular, and as humanists in general. On the other were those who saw this call as an attack on the core of our discipline. “I think you’ve missed your audience.” The speaker pointed out that those in the room who found my call mis- guided (if not offensive) traded in text: the core currency of the humanities. What I had referred to as “playing with technology” seemed to imply substituting cold computer code for that which they most treasured, which would require a level of expertise they did not possess. It was fine for me to follow this track, but few people in the room could manipulate (never mind master) the tools required. The presentation that I had given was not wrong; I had just chosen the wrong audience. Let’s get back to what we were doing, my colleague suggested—you in your sandbox, and we in ours. But the researchers and teachers in that room were exactly my audience. “Playing with technology” does not demand that we turn our backs on the substance or practices of our disciplines; indeed, the pillars of the humanities 1 2 / Introduction lend themselves to playful engagement.

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