I read this article first and I wanted to include it in my
blog post. This article is several years
old but gives a broad overview of how virtual world games, and specifically
Minecraft can be used to teach science.
The article is really intended for people who are unfamiliar with
Minecraft and all its possibilities so I was kind of disappointed in it. If you are not familiar with the game and its
educational applications, please read this article, but know that this article
only talks about science curriculum.
There are tons of other uses in curriculum from art to math to
literature exploration.
After reading this article and not really learning anything
new, except that you can use Global Information Systems (GIS) to create real
world replicas in Minecraft. Basically
that means you take GPS information that is publically available and have
Minecraft replicate that in game so players can experience their community (or
other locales) in game. I have been
doing research on exactly how that works, but I don’t have it all figured out
yet. Anyway, I decided to look for a
newer article that might provide more incites in to gaming as an educational
technology tool.
Q & A: Journalist Steps Into Realm Of Digital Games.
(2015). Education Week, 34(28), 9.
This article was published a week ago, on April 22,
2015. Because it was so recent, I was
hoping for a current view of how gaming is changing things in the
classroom. This article is an interview
between the Education Week staff writer Benjamin Herold and Greg Toppo, the author
of a new book titled “The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our
Children Smarter.” Toppo set out to
discover how teachers are using digital games to increase engagement and
improve learning.
During the interview, Toppo mentions several instances where
students were doing amazing work while playing video games. 4th graders in California are
using video games to complete advanced mathematics, or kids completing a full
opera in Minecraft, making the subjects students do not normally enjoy engaging
because it is coupled with computer gaming.
Some schools are also pushing up class size by incorporating
more gaming. When computer gaming is
doing the teaching and students are engaged, teachers are more able to manage
larger class sizes. This does not mean,
of course, that teachers are going to be replaced by computers and games, but
Toppo things computers could (and probably soon will) replace textbooks.
The article also mentions Amplify which I had heard about in
other similar discussions about gamification.
Amplify is a company that is going out to intentionally create
educational software that kids enjoy by grabbing up popular software programs
and modeling their educational software after already popular games. Maybe someday soon we will see a division of
EA Games called EA Education!
For me, this article is a validation of things I am already
seeing from my kids at home. The article
mentions the drawbacks and concerns about gaming – less social interaction,
less physical activity, too much screen time, but says we are already asking
students to sit still and be quiet most of the day anyway. And students are
more likely to sit still when engaged.
Gaming in this case allows students to experience (and possibly enjoy
more) a subject they may not have liked before.
Gaming helps them ‘get it.’
Despite what they say about concerns of lack of social interaction, my
kids have learned to work cooperatively and collaborate when playing
together. They play to their
skills. When playing Minecraft, my son
is the explorer/fighter. My daughter is
the builder and I am the resource collector.
They know if I am playing they do not need to chop down trees, because “Mom
does that!” They work together to plan
huge cities and divide the work. My son
plans out and builds the streets while my daughter gets started on the house or
store. They have also learned to work
cooperatively when fighting bad guys. I
often hear, “I’m nearly dead, you get em!”
I plan to use Minecraft next year in my Engineering
classroom as a building area to teach basic construction methods as well as
managerial concerns, like figuring out how much of each material you need
BEFORE you start building, building quality structures on a limited budget,
etc. I am excited about this and I am
sure you will hear more about how this works out here on my blog.
