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MECC

Minnesota's school computing service, and the home of The Oregon Trail

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The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium was set up in 1973 to bring computing to the state's schools and colleges. It wrote hundreds of educational programs, above all The Oregon Trail, sold them to schools across America and beyond, and became a company. SoftKey bought it in 1995, the year SoftKey took over The Learning Company and adopted its name.

Early in the 1970s Minnesota faced a problem that most American states met later: 433 public school districts and 30 public college campuses, each tempted to buy its own computers and write its own plan. The state legislature decided to coordinate them instead, and in 1973 the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium was born. It began as a public service for Minnesota’s schools. Within ten years it was selling educational programs to schools across the United States and in Britain, and one of them, The Oregon Trail, became the program it is remembered for.

Fast facts

  • Founded: 1973, by a joint powers agreement between Minnesota’s four public education systems.
  • Base: Lauderdale, then St. Paul, Minnesota.
  • Best-known program: The Oregon Trail; others included Odell Lake, Number Munchers and Word Munchers.
  • Became: the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation, a state-owned company, by 1986; sold to private investors in 1991.
  • Bought: by SoftKey in 1995. SoftKey took over The Learning Company the same year and renamed itself after it, so MECC became part of The Learning Company.

A consortium for a whole state

The Atari Connection explained the arrangement in September 1981. MECC was created “through a joint powers agreement” between the University of Minnesota, the State University System, the Community College System and the State Department of Education. “Minnesota is the only state,” the magazine said, “where a single organization… supports computer education from elementary school through the university level.”

Much of that support was people rather than programs. MECC’s instructional coordinators spent each school year visiting schools, running workshops and classes, organising conferences, publishing newsletters and answering phone calls: in a typical year they visited more than 300 school districts and 30 college campuses. MECC also bought hardware for the state. In 1981 it introduced a statewide purchase contract for Atari computers, mainly the Atari 400, and began converting 75 of its programs to run on them, each package with a teacher’s booklet of objectives, lesson plans and worksheets. According to later accounts, it had already chosen the Apple II for Minnesota’s schools in 1978.

Selling to schools everywhere

By the early 1980s MECC’s programs were travelling well beyond Minnesota. COMPUTE! called the consortium “renowned for its educational software for grades one through eight in a variety of math and science subjects” in April 1983. That August Hardcore, the journal of the British Apple Systems User Group, reported that the London borough of Havering had standardised on Apple computers and bought a licence to distribute MECC’s software to all its schools, sending the programs down a telephone line. In September 1983 Family Computing visited an American elementary school that had joined MECC for access to “hundreds of grade- and subject-specific programs”: its kindergarten teachers used a MECC concentration game to teach shapes and colours.

The prices were set for schools. In July 1984 MECC’s music theory programs for the Apple II cost $46 to $49 each. In May 1988 COMPUTE!’s guide to summer software for children listed The Oregon Trail for grades 5 and up, on the Apple II only, at $55. In the same table Math Blaster cost $49.95 and The Learning Company’s Math Rabbit $39.95.

The Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail was older than MECC. Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger wrote it in 1971, in HP Time-Shared BASIC, so that Rawitsch could teach his students about pioneer life in the 19th century. Retro Gamer later told the story as MECC hiring Rawitsch because the game was so popular, but Rawitsch’s own account in 1978 put it the other way round: after the student-teaching term the program survived only as “a curled up listing until Don joined the MECC staff in 1974 and loaded it onto the MECC system”, where he researched the trail further and revised the game for historical accuracy. He stayed: in 1987 RUN quoted Don Rawitsch as MECC’s administrative vice-president. MECC’s graphical Apple II version, The Oregon Trail, followed in 1985.

In March 1984 Commander, a magazine for Commodore owners, used an “Oregon Trail” program to show what an educational simulation was for: it “confronts the user with the choices that may have presented themselves to the pioneers as they travelled across the country.”

Into the home

By 1986 MECC had become the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation, and it began to sell to families as well as schools. Commodore sold a “MECC Home Software Library” of six programs for the Commodore 64 and 128, at $19.95 each: “For years, children have used MECC’s high-quality software in school,” its advertisement said. “Now MECC’s most popular packages are designed to continue education in the home!” Commodore also bundled Odell Lake, a simulation of a freshwater lake in which the player is a fish trying to survive, with the Commodore 64C.

Reviewing the library in Commodore Power Play in 1986, the teacher Jack Emberly singled out Expeditions, three historical journeys. One was the Oregon Trail of 1847, “a 2,000-mile journey from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon”, in which your possessions and your life depended on your marksmanship and your decisions. “My intermediate students loved role-playing pioneers of days gone by,” he wrote. “The biggest thrills were the hunting excursions.”

Sold, and sold again

Later accounts say that Minnesota sold MECC to private investors in 1991 and that its shares were floated in 1994. In October 1995 the software publisher SoftKey, in the middle of a hostile bid for The Learning Company, announced that it had agreed to buy MECC for $370 million in stock. SoftKey won The Learning Company and took its name, and MECC became part of the renamed company. That brought The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers and Word Munchers under the same owner as Reader Rabbit. When Mattel bought The Learning Company in 1999, MECC’s offices were closed. The Oregon Trail outlived the company that made it famous; its later history is told in its own entry.

Sources

  • 80 Micro issue 14, February 1981: MECC formed in 1973 “as a joint project of all public education agencies in the state”.
  • The Atari Connection vol. 1 no. 4, September 1981: “The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium” (the 1973 joint powers agreement and its four members, the 433 school districts and 30 campuses, the coordinators’ work, the Atari purchase contract and the 75 converted programs).
  • Don Rawitsch, Creative Computing vol. 4 no. 3, May–June 1978, p. 132: “Background On The OREGON Program” (Carleton College in 1971, the listing kept until he joined the MECC staff in 1974, the revisions for historical accuracy).
  • Creative Computing vol. 6 no. 9, September 1980: MECC’s address at 2520 Broadway Drive, Lauderdale.
  • COMPUTE! issue 35, April 1983, p. 180: MECC “renowned for its educational software”.
  • Hardcore (British Apple Systems User Group) vol. 3 no. 4, August 1983, p. 32: Havering’s licence to distribute MECC software to its schools.
  • Beth Powell, Family Computing vol. 1 no. 1, September 1983, pp. 22 and 26: a school’s membership of MECC and its programs.
  • Commander vol. 2 no. 3, March 1984: Andy Van Duyne, “BASIC Education: Programming for Learning, Part III: Simulations”, p. 58.
  • Family Computing vol. 2 no. 7, July 1984: MECC music theory programs and prices, St. Paul address.
  • COMPUTE! issue 69, February 1986: MECC as the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation.
  • Commodore Microcomputers vol. 7 no. 3, May 1986, p. 9: advertisement for the Commodore MECC home software (the six titles, $19.95 each, Odell Lake).
  • COMPUTE!’s Gazette issue 38, August 1986: the Commodore 64C bundled with Odell Lake.
  • Jack Emberly, “MECC Home Software Library”, Commodore Power Play vol. 5 no. 4, August/September 1986, pp. 36–38: the review and quotations.
  • RUN vol. 4 no. 9, September 1987: Don Rawitsch as MECC’s administrative vice-president.
  • Fred D’Ignazio, “Kids, Computers, and Summer Vacation”, COMPUTE! issue 96, May 1988, pp. 22–25: the software table (The Oregon Trail, Math Blaster, Math Rabbit).
  • Retro Gamer issue 109, December 2012, p. 70: The Oregon Trail in 1971, its authors, and MECC hiring Rawitsch.
  • For SoftKey’s takeover of The Learning Company, see The Learning Company entry and its sources.
  • “MECC” and “SoftKey”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the Apple II choice in 1978, the 1985 Oregon Trail, the private sale in 1991 and the flotation in 1994, SoftKey’s agreement of October 1995 to buy MECC for $370 million, the titles it brought, and the closure of MECC’s offices in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftKey

See also

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