Minecraft: Education Edition
Games in education. Are they useful, or are they just a distraction?
Engagement in gaming centres on challenge and reward. We see this formula in many aspects of modern life, for example through customer rewards cards and devices like Fitbit or Garmin watches which allow users to track goals and progress. With the rise in popularity of online and digital gaming, games are becoming more and more ingrained in society. Most children are growing up with various devices with which they can play any number of digital games, so it’s no surprise that children are used to engaging with new worlds and concepts through this mode of learning. Learning resources are being developed all the time through apps and websites that allow people to seek education in a non-threatening and engaging environment. The popularity of some of these is testament enough to their success in being both educational and motivating. 300 million+ users have created a profile on Duolingo to learn a new language. The site and app are designed with incentives and rewards and structure learning in a way that builds on previous knowledge using a variety of different activities. Duolingo can be social, linking with other people to view their progress and participate in challenges and forums.
For years, teachers have used resources like coolmathgames.com and Mathletics to encourage student engagement, which, as a student in primary school, I saw to be wildly successful. Students thrived on the competition in Mathletics, repeatedly logging in at the same time as their friends so that they could verse each other. On the coolmathgames website stduents supported each othermaking suggestions to solve a particular problem in a game they had more experience in. Neither of these have had quite the same relevance or impact as Minecraft. Minecraft is an open ended, “Sandbox” style game that can be played on any device, and is incredibly popular with gamers of all ages, but particularly those aged 3–12 years (Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs, 2018). This makes it an incredibly relevant topic for students in school. It’s already something they want to talk about and spend time doing, especially if they’re bored during school time. Students don’t need any convincing about the value of Minecraft, it’s teachers and parents that need persuading.
There have been many concerns expressed about the ‘dangers’ of video games now and in the past. Digital games are associated with violence, addiction, anti-social behaviour, passivity and poor physical health (Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs, 2018), and in the context of education they are a source of distraction when used outside of a learning scenario. There are some who take a hard stance against games in the classroom for any subject, arguing that games oversimplify learning and rely on students ability to choose the correct answer and so are no different from standardised testing (Thomsen, 2014). These are arguments that demonstrate a vast misunderstanding of what games in education can really look like. Though I can concede the point that some games follow a multiple choice or pass/fail format, even these games, with in-game goals and incentives are engaging students with the material far more than a test or worksheet. More sophisticated games — of which Minecraft is one — are experiential and immersive, offering students opportunities to learn in a variety of ways. Not to mention, this is how students are accustomed to learning anyway (Schaffhauser, 2013). James Paul (Edutopia, 2012) recalls a scenario where he introduced himself to a video game by reading a manual about it first to limited success. He said, when he played the game for a while and began to understand the world and how it worked and the vocabulary, the manual no longer looked like just words, it began to make a lot more sense(Edutopia, 2012). From my own experience with games I’ve found this to be true. People learn far better through immersing themselves in the experiences. They can make connections between concepts and turn those concepts into actions.
Fortunately, a new Minecraft edition has recently been released that has been in the works for a number of years called Minecraft: Education Edition (M:EE) which has the potential to sooth the concerns of some of the more anti-digital voices out there. One study conducted in Melbourne found that while Minecraft is the most dominant digital game played by children aged 3–12, there is no evidence that it is being played to excess; that is, played enough that the game disrupts their everyday life (Mavoa, Carter & Gibbs, 2018). Additionally, the parents who were surveyed in the study reported that Minecraft was usually a social activity for their children. The game, created by Mojang and now owned by Microsoft, has been consistently evolving since it’s initial release with regular world updates and various editions. When Minecraft Education was still in its early stages, it was recognised that the standard edition had the potential to nurture creativity, critical thinking, communication skills, collaboration and problem solving (Lorence, 2015).
Minecraft appeals to a lot of audiences because it is open-ended. Players can choose whether or not they want monsters in the game, whether they want it to be an adventure or whether they just want to build. Some players create challenges for themselves, or collaborate to design new things. M:EE is designed specifically to be used in an education setting. It is an excellent example of taking something that kids already find fun and that they want to spend time doing and using it to teach them about the real world. below is a video demonstrating the experiences educators are having with M:EE.
Having explored both the standard and education editions myself, I’ve discovered M:EE has several notable differences to the standard Minecraft game, one of these being that the inventory contains the entire periodic table of elements. The game features a number of lesson templates; these are fully developed worlds with instructions and information that can be used in whatever way a teacher sees fit. One of these introduces the player to the subject area of chemistry. The game allows students to freely explore what elements make up various objects, the particle makeup of the elements, create new compounds, and experiment to create new things and effects in the ‘lab’. With these abilities, students can undertake experiments and learn to create items like helium balloons by using the elements to create latex and filling it with helium. Other experiments in the game include making glowsticks, sparklers, and changing the colour of flames using different chemicals. All of these experiments are rooted in real world knowledge, but they allow students to explore in an environment where they are comfortable and able to make mistakes without serious consequences. Students can also develop understanding of the world by venturing out and collecting samples such as dirt, sand, wood, clay, etc. and inserting it into one of the tools called the Material Reducer. This tool in Minecraft breaks the item down into it’s main elements. Some of the objects in the Minecraft world do not exist in the real world, so while they may include some real world elements, the rest of it is made up of elements represented with a question mark.
Other templates in M:EE include a collaboration with WFF about biodiversity and animal extinction. It is a beautifully crafted world set up like theme park, complete with upscaled figures of extinct animals and exhibits of endangered animals. The NPCs (non-player characters) in this template are stationed at each exhibit to provide information about the animals, when they live, and what has caused them to go extinct. Exploring this world was fun, engaging and immersive, however as much of the information was delivered through text a lot of the information didn’t stick well. For this reason, I think the game is best delivered with accompanying activities for students to perform. They would need some kind of motivation to engage with the information and not simply enjoy the fact that they are playing a game. This is where I believe some of the Education Edition’s unique features would come in handy.
In addition to the templates, teachers are able to create their own worlds in M:EE. There is a template to introduce players to how to build in and navigate the world of Minecraft, but once teachers are able to do that, options are limited only to the imagination. Opportunities for learning in M:EE can be as simple as a simpler version of the biodiversity museum where information from a text book is presented visually and interactively. Or it might look like a walking tour of student work presented like an art exhibition. As an art teacher, one of the templates that intrigued me was the design of a book cover. Players are provided with a chest full of coloured wool and a giant book to decorate how they please. However the concept can easily be applied to the creation of a three dimensional sculpture, or an architectural work. Experimentation and problem solving when working three-dimensionally is far more forgiving and better for the environment when the materials being used are pixels and can be destroyed and replaced in seconds.
In Victoria, every government school has been granted new Licensing agreements with Minecraft: Education Edition (Behan, 2018). Given this opportunity, it is likely that we will be seeing M:EE implemented in classrooms more and more. I can only hope that more templates will appear with opportunities in a wider range of subject areas. Several state education pages have already updated with information about M:EE for both parents and students.
References
Behan, P. (2018, August 14). Rethinking the role of games and education [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.atc.qld.edu.au/news/rethinking-the-role-of-games-and-education
Bonaiuti, G. (2011, December 20). B.F. Skinner — Teaching machine and programmed learning [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo
Edutopia. (2012, March 21). James Paul Gee on Learning with Video Games [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnEN2Sm4IIQ
Edutopia. (2013, August 20). Kurt Squire on Civic Engagement Through Digital games (Big Thinker Series) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtSy78xTf5M
Groom, G. (2014, May 20). What’s holding schools back from using games in class?. ABC Education. Retrieved from http://education.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/1228672/whats-holding-schools-back-from-using-games-in-class
Lorence, M. (2015). School of Minecraft: MinecraftEdu brings common core-enhanced gaming to the classroom. School Library Journal, 61(4), 26.
Mackay, R.F. (2013, March 1). Playing to learn: Panellists at Stanford discussion say using games as an educational tool provides opportunities for deeper learning. Stanford News. Retrieved from https://news.stanford.edu/2013/03/01/games-education-tool-030113/
Mavoa, J., Carter, M., & Gibbs, M. (2018). Children and Minecraft: A survey of children’s digital play. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3283–3303.
Schaffhauser, D. (2013, October 9). Will Gaming Save Education, or Just Waste Time? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://thejournal.com/Articles/2013/09/02/Will-Gaming-Save-Education-or-Just-Waste-Time.aspx?Page=1
Stathakis, R. (2013). Five Reasons to Use Games in the Classroom [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/reasons-to-play-games-in-the-classroom.shtml
Thomsen, M. (2014, March 29). Gamifying the classroom is a bad idea [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/videogames-in-theclassroom.html