You may download "Campaign Trail," which has been written for the Macintosh. The 32MB file, Campaign.sea.hqx is a self-extracting archive that, when decompressed and expanded, contains the program, the Hyperstudio Player, and complete documentation. To run the program, double-click on the "Campaign Trail" stack inside the "Campaign Trail" folder.

"Campaign Trail": Revised Project Description (February 24, 1998)

GOALS:

• To learn various facts about early American History: colonial period, American Revolution, Constitution, first four presidents (and their wives)
• To gain a better understanding of how the president of the US is elected
• To become familiar with using outside reference material
• To read and create timelines

FORMAT:

The object of the game is to be elected president. The students either play a computer opponent or each other and the computer opponent. The "candidate" must go through the various steps in the election process (e.g. campaigning, winning the primaries, etc.) by completing an activity -- answering a series of trivia questions, organizing a timeline, matching names with faces. Students are supposed to check reference materials (a la Carmen Sandiego). At each step, the student has a choice of category relating to early American History on which the activities will focus.

DESCRIPTION:

The game begins with the student entering her name, homestate, party position, and possibly issue stance, all of which would be incorporated into newspaper headlines as the student goes. These "front pages" will mark the progress of the student during the election process, announcing primary results, speech schedules, election results, etc.

Step 1:

The first newspaper describes them as a presidential hopeful and includes the other information which the student entered. The student moves to the first level, which might be a fund-raising event. She is presented with a description of how and why presidential fund-raising works, and with the amount of money she must earn to run a successful campaign, comparable to the amount necessary for real presidential campaigns. She is then presented with an activity or a series of trivia questions. The questions, which represent funders who are being approached for funding, might include: Who was the third President of the United States? What two explorers did President Jefferson send West to study the land? Each correct answer earns the candidate perhaps one million dollars. Each question is accompanied by a short clarification, displayed when the student gets the answer right and a hint if the student gets the answer wrong (e.g. No, George Washington was the first president. Who was the third president?) Incorrect answers earn the candidate a smaller amount of money.

Step 2:

At the end of the level, another newspaper front page appears, with the headline describing the fund-raising successes of the candidate, and announcing a trip to state "X" to make an appearances at the primary. Again, an activity is presented or questions asked in order to win that state's primary. This process continues for several more states.

We envision this process continuing through several levels of advancement, including Fundraising, Speeches, Primaries, Traveling to different states, Debates, Advertising, Nominating Convention, Select Vice Presidential candidate, Election of President and Inauguration. The activities and questions will get increasingly harder as the candidate progresses and gets closer to the WHite House. The candidate's progress would be tracked on a picture -- either a ladder or a road leading to the White House -- illustrating the different levels of advancement which the candidate must pass. This picture would be either constantly present in the top corner of the screen or accessible by a button on the screen.

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

We feel that this concept addresses Ms. Boisclair's intentions for the program (one that would teach the students about early American history while keeping them amused) as well as the conditions under which it will be used (1 or 2 kids using the computer for 15-20 min. at a time). Because it is a game, we hope students will be interested in playing it and motivated to do well. It will teach hard facts about US History, and also concepts about the Presidential elections - the latter of which is rarely comprehended by most Americans (including us four programmers....) Our challenges will be to clearly draw the links between the mock election and the real election, to provide some more background knowledge about each step. We also want to make what could be a potentially non-tangible goal (becoming President) interesting to fourth graders.

STRATEGY:

• Schedule: The four of us will continue to meet twice a week for an hour and a half. We'll also meet with Ms. Boisclair once a week to discuss the project and observe the class.
• Tools: We're planning on using HyperStudio for this project since we know her machines can handle it. We'd rather use Authorware if we can get it running on her computers and if it provides extra user functionality, but we'll have to see...

That's about it! Comments and questions are more than welcome....