250 years on, the Cook’s Voyages game brings a new voice to the classroom
The Cook’s Voyages game A new educational resource
On 29 April 2020, the museum launched a new online game for students. Cook’s Voyages: Views from the Shore has been created to engage a new generation of learners with the achievements, as well as the ongoing implications, of James Cook’s 18th-century voyages into the Pacific. By Peter Tattersall.
68 Signals 131 Winter 2020
THE GAME’S LAUNCH DATE OF 29 APRIL was 250 years to the day that the First Australians saw Cook and his crew land for the first time on Australia’s east coast. This anniversary marks an opportunity to revisit the traditional view of these landings, and to add a key perspective to the narrative – that of the people whose custodianship of this land preceded Cook’s arrival by tens of thousands of years. Designed for primary and middle-school classrooms, this game puts students in command of an 18th-century voyage into the Pacific in which players choose from a series of specially designed missions, select their crew and stock their vessel (the HMB Enterprise) with all the equipment needed to achieve their goals and return safely to England. Players will need to choose wisely, as the challenges and adventures that await them will stretch the crew and vessel to their limits. If they survive, players will be judged by the British Admiralty and the public on the choices they made along the way, with reputation all important in 18th-century London society. Along the way, students can observe and measure the transit of Venus, circumnavigate and chart Aotearoa–New Zealand, sail further south than any previous expedition into the Antarctic Circle, land on and chart Australia’s east coast, describe the plants and animals they find there, and meet and learn from Aboriginal people from four different parts of the continent.