Immersive History Takes You to the Plague of Athens: Interview with Spencer Striker, History Adventures

Spencer Striker is determined to make history come alive, and to put learners in the middle of scenarios that let them role play in ways that relate to their lives in ways they never imagined possible. The latest addition is "Global Pandemics: Plague of Athens," which plunges learners in the middle of a mysterious pandemic that occured in Ancient Greece. 

Dr. Striker, who is a Digital Media Design professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, earned his Ph.D. in Digital Media from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  

Here is an interview from May 13, 2022 about Global Pandemics.  https://youtu.be/o-oTOO2ahSg

At Life Edge, we had the privilege of interviewing Spencer in 2020 over his series featuring revolutions in history in History Adventures. Here is a link to the show: https://youtu.be/S5BNBD9INTk 

Spencer Striker on E-Learn Chat in 2020

Welcome to an interview with Spencer Striker, Ph.D., along with links to demos. 

1. Is the Global Pandemics  game ready now? 

Yes, absolutely! You can find the fully interactive web app available here: https://pandemics.historyadventures.app/

(It’s built for a desktop or laptop running in the Chrome browser, i.e. Chromebooks)

Please also find the full gameplay demo here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ-HVOJvqSs&t=7s 

Also, please find a full Media Kit of product screenshots here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YL0fFQBSErBGqYXVueXuKQ_gCdWXSCRj?usp=sharing 

2. How much does it cost? 

It’s absolutely free!

3. What do people think was the main thing that caused the plague? Was it something unique, or was it a massive cholera outbreak or something like that? 

To this day, historians are not certain what was the cause of the Plague of Athens. In the product, we challenge students to think like historians/epidemiologists and examine the possible causes in a feature we call: What Was It? Please see the attached screenshot as a reference! The possible suspects include: smallpox, bubonic plague, ebola, typhus, and typhoid.

4.  Can students interact with the vectors? (for example, with rats and fleas? a first-person shooter game to kill the rats?  or run from the fleas in a maze?)

We have many amazing interactive features built into Global Pandemics: Plague of Athens. Please find a list here!

• 3D Motion Design to Recreate History
• Advanced Web Animation to Simulate Pathogens
• Immersive 360 Panoramas of Historical Locations
• Animated Historical Timeline & Maps
• Choice-based Narrative Design
• Interactive Original Historical Documents
• Media-Rich Adaptive Assessments