A new computer game will help teach middle school students about Maine history.
AUBURN – You are the detective in an interactive computer game. Your mission: find out how slaves came to Maine.
With an animated police chief to help, you check out old letters and documents. You take virtual trips across the state. Keep field notes and earn points for good detective work. Report back when the case is solved.
It’s an online adventure that’s a lot more interesting than a history lecture.
And it will soon be coming to a middle school near you.
Created by the Center for Educational Services, an Auburn-based education organization, DiscoverME is a four-week Maine history lesson disguised as a computer game. With animated characters, colorful graphics and a story that turns students into detectives, the Web-based game is designed to grab Maine’s youngest generation.
“It’s what middle school kids are used to,” said Jessica Kelly, education specialist for the Center for Educational Services. “It’s what they want.”
The game was officially unveiled Thursday.
It is now available to every seventh- and eighth-grade class in Maine. Students can access the game online using their home computers or the laptops assigned to them through their middle schools.
About 100 students tested the game last year. Another 1,500 participated in a pilot program this year.
Peter Gillingham, a social studies teacher at Lake Region Middle School in Naples, tried DiscoverME with his seventh-graders this winter.
“They dove right in,” he said. “I didn’t have to say, ‘Come on, get going’ or, ‘Don’t talk to your friends.'”
Students can choose from 15 cases. All focus in some way on events connected to Maine’s diversity and heritage, such as the French and Irish immigrations.
The game provides players with real historical documents, timelines and maps. A wide-eyed chief helps when there’s a problem. Players can advance in rank by answering multiple-choice questions about Maine history and can earn points and virtual travel vouchers for a job well done.
Teachers can track student progress and read their case reports. They can allow a young detective to move on in the game or they can send them back to find out more.
At the end, players interview real community members as “witnesses to history.” They swap their interviews with other DiscoverME players around the state.
Although Maine history is required by the Maine Learning Results, teachers have never had the textbooks or other resources needed to design lessons, Kelly said.
The four-week game gives them those lessons. And students so far seem happy to participate.
“Kids are doing it during their study halls. They’re doing it at home,” Kelly said.
About 60 teachers have already signed up their classes for the game, including three in Lewiston and one in Auburn. Developed with a $200,000 federal grant, DiscoverME is free to all teachers.
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