It was probably the first time most of the Gen Z students had seen the technology.
“I’m going to ask you to bear with me today as you engage with some of the old-timey experiences with the games,” Crystal DeJaegher, academic technology specialist on the Office of Information Technology’s Teaching & Learning Technologies team, said to her Games and Simulations for Learning class.
Visiting the Hesburgh Libraries, the students were about to experience the technology of their ancestors, or at least their parents. They would use a joystick to play Pac-Man and Pele’s Soccer on an Atari 2600. They would have to flip a floppy disc to continue their journey on The Oregon Trail using an Apple IIe. And they would experience the long load times trying to play Michael Crichton’s Amazon on a Commodore 64. In addition, the students, who primarily only experience games through digital downloads, had the opportunity to explore an array of games with original packaging, formats, and ephemera.
The technological blasts from the past were available for DeJaegher’s class thanks to the Hesburgh Libraries’ Legacy Technology Collection. Curated by Dan Johnson, English, digital humanities, and film, television, and theatre librarian and interim co-director of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, the collection comprises vintage consoles and software.
“Our collection runs roughly from the late 1970s until the early 2000s,” Johnson said. “But, we anticipate there could be forward movement, as more technology enters legacy status.”
With technology rapidly changing, the Center for Digital Scholarship maintains state-of-the-art equipment to support teaching and research. So why is it important to also preserve technologies from the past?
