Let Growing Blog parent education and educators

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Sometimes teachers we endeavor to follow the same teaching methodologies always, despite realizing that they are not causing the effect it should and that our students get bored as oysters. The point is, Why do we insist? Do we think our students? Or thinking about us?

On occasion I mentioned in my post Minecraft, a game that caused and continues to cause a stir among the kids and not so little ones. Luckly, many professionals who have seen the educational potential of this game and have developed effective educational programs based on it. In today's post, we will see these programs.

For those who do not know Minecraft, I'm going to tell you a little about what it consists of, although the best thing is that you play and know it yourselves.

Basically, the objective of the video game is to make constructions with three-dimensional cubes. Many have compared it to conventional building sets like LEGO. But Minecraft goes much further. Players can explore the environment, collect resources and create objects with a specific utility, either defense, of survival, etc.

Obviously the game has different modes that make it more or less complicated and, therefore, more or less according to the characteristics of the player.

Why are these types of games so attractive to children and adolescents??

I don't want to get too involved in analyzing each of these points, because later I will dedicate a post to this topic, but if I want to mention them here so that we understand that talking about video games in education is not free and has its foundations.

The videogames…

• They design experiences. What, In most cases, children could not have otherwise.
• Define problems. One of the most effective ways to learn is to pose problems that we must solve. Video games generally pose problems that the player must solve. Further, video games pose the problems in the correct sequence.
• They offer feedback. An important point of video games, and that is related to the resolution of the problems raised, It is the feedback that is usually received when you manage or not to solve a problem.
• Give the power to the apprentice. Nobody learns anything, unless you choose to learn it. Students should feel that what they are going to do matters. With games like Minecraft, children feel that what they do matters because what they do affects play. Somehow, they are designing the game.
• They offer situated learning. Children learn words and concepts because they interact with them. Through this interaction they integrate the concepts better and deep learning takes place.
• Customization. Video games offer the opportunity to customize the situation. Good games offer the opportunity to customize the environment, the type of player, the tools, etc. This, at the same time, is closely related to empowering the apprentice, something we already mentioned.
• Simplify. Sometimes we try to explain to our students very complex situations and concepts for which we do not have enough tools. Video games offer us the opportunity to simplify these situations so that students understand them better.
• They are a safe place of exploration. As we already saw in the post Keys to learning how to learn from mistakes, we must let the children explore, so that they are able to learn from their mistakes. The videogames, always under the supervision of an adult, they are a great way to offer students the possibility of trial and error, in a safe way.
• Identity. One of the main reasons that lead us to learn new concepts, is thinking about what this learning will help us for in the future, where will it take us. Video games work very well this. They give you an identity, a goal that you must pursue and achieve, always knowing what your reward will be and what you will become if you get them.
• Handling. Video games allow you to almost completely manipulate the game, the roles, etc. The player feels almost "in" the game. This is the main reason why many times when we are playing a video game and we want, for example, let a character jump, we jump too.

Said all this. Don't you think they are a great tool to teach our students?

As I said at the beginning of post, what I want to demonstrate with this article, is that using video games to teach is not a utopia, there are people who already do it and with very good results.

Let's see some examples of educational programs based on Minecraft.

• Minecraft Edu

Minecraft Edu is a program designed by Teacher Gaming, a company dedicated to game development, whose main objective is to implement learning through games around the world.

One of their programs is Minecraft Edu, a set of tools specifically designed to adapt the use of Minecraft for educational purposes and to teach everything from history to mathematics to many other subjects.

• LearnToMod

It is a program that teaches children to learn to code through Minecraft. Basically, children can modify the game according to their interests.

• Thoughtstem

It is a company that teaches children to program through games, including Minecraft. In fact, the program that this company uses to teach programming with Minecraft is LearnToMod.

• Makers Factory

Organize programs, courses and camps for children to learn through different tools, including Minecraft, but always in a group and cooperatively.

I hope these tools and programs inspire and encourage us to use video games, not just minecraft in education.

To finish I leave you the web dedicated to explaining how we can use Minecraft in education.

Nobody says it's easy but, Why not try?

Thanks for being there!

“The man who can make the difficult easy is the educator.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

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Tags: learning with ICT, Education, minecraft, Program, program, ICT

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2015 at 11:04 am and is filed under Technologies. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.