All of the cool stuff I'm seeing, all of the stuff that seems to offer redeeming education value, e.g. visiting ancient Rome, constructing a space station or a Mars colony, building scenes from a book, all seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the "survival" aspects of the game.
In short, what's the point of the sheep and cows and building a shelter, collecting resources, and fighting off mobs and all the rest of that?
Also there is virtually no language (thus no language learning) in all of that aspect of the game. Granted there may be potential (and necessary) language use involved in learning how to play, such as watching YouTube videos, seeking help, reading webpages, but all of that is outside of MC proper and in this regard, MC becomes only a topic focus rather than a tool, i.e. "Let's learn language by interacting about topic X." MC is X.
Minecraft is not an 'educational game', it is a AAA game made by and for gamers, hence the game engine is not solely designed to provide an educational experience. The survival element is part of the game engine and provides the challenge that makes the game engaging.
ReplyDeleteHowever, from an educational perspective, the survival aspect allows kids to develop collaboration, planning and communication skills as they work together to gather resources to build their creations. Having said that, there are options to run the game in 'creative mode' where you have full access to all the materials and can focus solely on the creation aspect - and I do use this with kids when I want them focus on building as part of a history, science, art project for example.
Re: language learning - I work with kids in Minecraft from various countries and there is lots of language learning going on as they communicate with each other ingame via text and in our Discord channel via text and voice. The desire to be understood by fellow players is a great motivator. :)
First, I'm a language teacher. I don't teach other subjects. And I don't teach children. For most of my 35 years of TESOL, I have been teaching at the university level. So I'm looking at MC from that perspective. I do see how it might foster valuable developmental skills in young children. I haven't yet seen convincing demonstrations of its use with adult ESL/EFL learners.
ReplyDeleteYou will always have people who can't see its uses don I supose in the end its whatever you feel. To be honest i approached it with an open mind and battled to win people over and won.
ReplyDeleteUses at my school. Programming of mining turtles. Admittedly this is is a mod which adds scope to the basic game. Second is the what I call soft skills of team work and collaboration with people taking on roles. Maybe with your background you need to start with the question what do I want to achieve by bringing my task into Minecraft? By working together how does that enhance the learning of language as a group.
You also need to remember that the platform of Minecraft will not be suitable for all age groups. Above a certain age people struggle with the concept that "it's a game". Again see it as a tool not the "be all and end all" to replace all others but another tool in what I like to call the batman utility belt of teaching.
I don't use Minecraft to develop language but from what I can see if I did I would encourage students to record their experiences of the world in a diary
This can be done inside Minecraft.
Again rather than discuss its uses and adult education maybe just better too dive into the server at a an agreed time with a group of people and see what ideas arise?
All I would say is have an idea of what you want to achieve and see what's possible in Minecraft.
Not every lesson is geared to Minecraft but you need to be willing to give it a go in order to see where's it's applicable and what the limitations are.
I find as an ict and history teacher I am now doing YouTube videos and turn these into embedded items in Minecraft to support learning.
Steve, thanks for the lengthy response. I feel certain that I'm just not seeing the aspects of MC yet that I would consider using to foster language learning. But I continue with my efforts to learn the basics of MC both in creative and survival models...though so far only in single-player. I tried yesterday to log into the EVO server just to test if I could and was not successful.
ReplyDeleteBTW, while I appreciate the value of "team work" and "collaboration" I'm not sure I see either as central to language learning per se, even if in my research specialty (conversation analysis) we do conceive of language competence as shared and co-constructed.
ReplyDeleteThere are editable books in the game which would allow for documentation of discussions centred around activity in the virtual world. Again its entirely up to you how you use or don't use it. All I would say is that the modded Minecraft is a different beast yup the vanilla our standard Minecraft that you will experience on the evomooc server
ReplyDeleteOne of the more powerful aspects of games, like Minecraft, is not so much the language in the game, but the language outside of the game. They provide students a shared experience that can be discussed and explored together - games as a cultural space versus just being software.
ReplyDeleteMost games, I'd argue, shouldn't be looked at as a text - like books, movies, or a TV show - but as a space. Nor should they be an object students learn from but seen as a "object to think with" (see book Mindstorms). Minecraft is many things, but it is not Rosetta Stone :)
For me I have used Minecraft as a means to give my students experiences that would not be possible in the real world. My goal was to provide them a visually-rich experience that complimented a book we read in class and from those two sources create pieces of writing.
Here's an presentation from way back about the course.
youtube.com - CALICO 2014 Minecraft Presentation
That was the idea behind my comment that the learning comes from "talk about X" with MC=X. So the question becomes in which ways might MC make a better X than other Xs. As an avid photographer and RC modeler I can quite easily imagine either of these subjects (both with immense communities, web forums, YouTube videos, etc.). But the "equipment" involved make them unsuitable for most educational contexts.
ReplyDeleteOver the last couple of days, I've been involved in intense forum discussions (with links to YouTube videos and other website) as well as personal experiences and suggestions, posted photos...all on the topic of tools, types of solder, and flux for brazing metals. While most of the forum participants have a high level of English competence they come from all over the world. But I don't imagine too many school students would be interested in solder and flux. So the best argument for using games is that a younger generation grew up with games and so already likes them. BTW, I've asked my student informally about minecraft and most have never heard of it. Actually, only a few regularly game on a console or computer and most just play little game apps on their smartphones.
ReplyDeleteDon Carroll Agreed. The wholly digital nature of the Minecraft community of practice makes is easier to fit into a classroom context than other communities.
ReplyDeleteI've been experimenting with MC for about a week now...and will keep it up at least for the duration of these session. But my feeling at this point is that I definitely wouldn't use it as a "shared experience" with students who didn't already know how to use it...or who weren't already deeply immersed in similar other gaming. I also have doubts about the "naturalness" of the language generated via gaming (or talk about gaming). It may be great for learning English for Gaming, but how useful is that gaming English outside of the gaming world? (I should mention that my interests in language tend towards pragmatics and social action).
ReplyDeleteGrammar, of course, is the model of closely ordered, routinely observable social
ReplyDeleteactivities. (Sacks, 1992:31[Fall 1964, lecture 4])
I had a very brief look just now (am heading out the door in a moment). I'll have a closer look later on. For now, can you tell me what sort of gaming experience your students bring to the class to start with? Are there any students with zero gaming experience (with any game)? Are these students at a disadvantage compared to the rest? If it were me, and I were in the class as a non-gamer (or even a kid who just didn't like games), I might not like being forced to have the whole course revolve around MC (or any other game). I teach adults in Japan and I would say that more than half don't play any game beyond something like candy-crush on their phone. Many are only marginally computer literate.
ReplyDeleteTwo questions: 1) How long does it take your students to learn the MC skills needed to carry out these objectives? I've been at it a week and can barely manage to cut down trees and make a crafting table. And 2) Do you happen to have any samples of the Spanish that your learners produced during this project. I took a look at your Spanish-language instructions and those seem to me to be already at an intermediate level.
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