@Ideas Factory – Julian S Wood
Yesterday I read a tweet from the excellent Carl Hendrick signposting an article from the Atlantic website called ‘The Myth of the Minecraft Curriculum’ It’s sub-heading was entitled-
“In reality, the computer program has about as much inherent educational value as an overhead projector.”
I am not going to bore you with an in-depth analysis of a frankly wide-of-the-mark article. But you can guess the basic premise, the very popular sandbox PC,Console and IOS game Minecraft “is not intrinsically educational.”….
I’d also heard one particular nameless, high profile blogger and tweeter, at a national educational event reduce education technology to “all kids do on the internet is go on Facebook”.
Obviously if you or your kids don’t play Minecraft (which the writer of the article doesn’t) and if your only experience of teenagers is them talking incessantly about Facebook (well it is a social network!) then your knowledge is going to be based on experience as tiny as a gnat’s chuff.
I replied to Carl’s tweet with this-
“Hows about co-operatively building in Minecraft on Xbox with 6 friends chatting with 1 while face timing on iPad with another.”
Followed swiftly with-
“…..That’s my nephew playing Minecraft-don’t think he does it for his Maths homework but is definitely learning something.”
Let’s go into this in detail, after school, my nephew and his friends build gigantic structures co-operatively, together. Whilst verbally instructing and helping each other on XBox Live and Facetiming on their iPads. They search the internet for tips and watch ‘how-to’ videos (created and shared by other Minecraftians) in their own time, they then teach each other how to ‘craft’ certain materials, which combinations of these materials create new items and where the locations in the game are to find them.
For me this type of engagement is the zenith of learning, an informal fellowship striving to achieve a common goal, through co-operation, social learning and research.
At the time of writing 18,647,546 people have bought PC/Mac version of the game, not adding the countless millions who have bought the IOS and XBox versions. So it doesn’t take the greatest leap of imagination to think that many more kids would be playing Minecraft in the same way my nephew and his friends do.
This is just one game-all the cool kids have moved on to newer challenges like Garry’s Mod and Terraria.
And it’s nothing new-in 2011 I wrote an article about how my brother wrote a Nintendo Wii game with help from global collaborators and social learning.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment