Hey guys, I'm really interested in Games-based Learning, a fairly new initiative amongst teachers whereby we use games in the classroom to make children more interested in the subject matter. For example, getting children to set time trial times in Mario Kart Wii, talking about fair testing (same kart, same character, same controller, etc), taking averages of the times, seeing how far above or below the average they are, percentage improvements in times, etc, etc. One of the things I think has the most scope for a wide range of opportunities for learning, however, is Minecraft. In maths, children could think about how many blocks you would need to make a wall? How many for their house? What is the volume of the house? How many sticks and iron ingots do you need for a full set of iron tools? In literacy, children could write a diary of their survival, or a story about their character's time on the land. In science you can talk to the children about materials, which is harder, which is most suitable for a certain task (eg, would you build a house out of sand?). In PSHE, children could play survival multiplayer and build a community, enhancing team building and communication skills. Would anyone fall into natural roles, like resource collecting, building or organising? Would children share their chests, or keep them hidden away for themselves? In a few minutes, that's what I came up with, but I was wondering if any of you more die-hard Minecraft players had any thoughts or opportunities for learning that you've discovered in the game?
Would be interesting to find this out. But the problem is that you need a group of children laying around somewhere to experiment with... Perhaps this test could be done with "big kids" instead
Honestly you've got more of a social thing there. You'll easily discover who are "leaders", "organisers", "Builders", "Gathers" and of course all classes have them, "Griefers". You could easily base it on teamwork with an idea such as "The server is set to hard, weapons are not allowed, build somewhere that your entire class can survive and it must be x, y and z... you have 2 Minecraft days" (48 minutes if i'm right), might be an idea?
Getting the group of children to experiment with is not an issue at all when it comes to professional research. Many school will be happy to be involved in breakout projects, especially as SATs finish in Year 6 and there is no more requirement to fulfil learning objectives. Whilst I do know that it is a more social thing, the idea of Games Based Learning is not to play the game and have learning fall out of it, it's using the game as a tool to fulfil a specific objective. i.e 'Oh, my medium term planning tells me I'm teaching perimeter and area today, I'll allow the children x number of blocks in Minecraft to build shapes and investigate the links between the two' instead of 'Let's play Minecraft and see what happens' @CardJoe - That's fantastic, thanks for sharing that!
