The Oregon Trail (Video Game Turned Fun Math Activity)

Entry #9: (11/16/2019)

Synopsis:

Last week I started working at a new educational facility-a private school up in Bronx's Riverdale area. On that particular day of the week, I was substituting at a 3rd-grade classroom alongside the head co-teacher. As the math period started, the teacher opened the math book on the page titled "The Oregon Trail". He went ahead to explain to the kids that once upon a time, during the mid-1980s, there was this video game called The Oregon Trail, that simulated the migration of people from the East coast to the West coast along the wilderness of The Oregon Trail. As a player, you became familiar with the harsh conditions and unexpected situations that would often rise while embarking on this challenging route as you traveled in horse and carriage. The school's math book took the game's theme and turned it into mathematical exercises dealing with unit measurements (miles) incorporated in a real-world setting. One of the questions went as such (reworded): "The wagon started off at *the name of the town* and traveled 135 miles west. They stopped at *name of second town* for 1 hour then continued 158 more miles. When they stopped at this forest *name of forest*, how many miles have they traveled so far since *name of initial town*?" Since this school uses their own particular textbook (charter schools and public schools both use the same teaching material), I'm assuming this chapter reflected the below commno core standard:

CCLS - Math: 3.MD.8

Category

Measurement And Data

Sub-Category

Geometric Measurement: Recognize Perimeter As An Attribute Of Plane Figures And Distinguish Between Linear And Area Measures.

State Standard:

Solve real world and mathematical problems involving perimeters of polygons, including finding the perimeter given the side lengths, finding an unknown side length, and exhibiting rectangles with the same perimeter and different areas or with the same area and different perimeters.

 

The game itself looks quite interesting and kind of ahead of its time, if you ask me, with the visuals and theory applied to it in a realistic manner (for the 1980s). You design a game that entertains players as well as helps them understand how people embarked into unexplored territories full of danger and unexpected circumstances for a chance to attain a better life. Nowadays, the only video games that simulate reality are war games and crime-ridden ones, which I feel are too deeply incorporated into our kid's psyche. At least this one was flexible enough to be applied in the math classroom.

 

 

 

I don't know if this image is an actual image that would pop up while playing the game, or maybe someone in the internet wanted to turn the game humorous, but if it's indeed something that would pop up in the game, then this would be a bit too realistic for people playing it. Wow, what an announcement!

This is how the map was shown in the student's math book-the Oregon Trail Map on an actual US map with different points labeling different stops taken by the carriage, in miles, where you either had to find the total travel time or the difference from one town to the next.