Digital game based learning

Minecraft maths

Here follows a brief account of a series of lessons I did using Minecraft classic, which is the free version available on minecraft.net.

It first struck me to use minecraft in maths while I was observing a specific student who was totally immersed in the game - to the extent that I had to pull him out of his game so he could participate in my lesson.

I chose to focus on the area of technical drawing, where students were to learn about perspective, depth and isometric view. I asked my students to create a block within the limits of a 3x3x3 cube, and then had them sketch the same block using different techniques. Basically I was using the blocks in the game for the same thing as I would have used centicubes for.

A block designed within a 3x3x3x cube.

So the curricular goals were simple and clear, and the workflow in the lesson was quite straightforward. Or was it? Here are some of the challenges I met doing this lesson and my reflections on these:

Vast playground vs restrictions

I knew I would have to introduce the students to the user interface and the controls. Here I let them play around freely in the break to let them familiarize themselves with the environment. When I came back the boys were building massive towers and the girls were building dainty houses…thought provoking.

Having done that I came with my 3x3x3 restriction and had them do sketches on paper as they were working with their minecraft construction. The best of it was that I made a contract with the students that if they didn’t stick to the assignments I had given them I would go analog. (Of course - I was just bluffing)

But I was asking myself: Why introduce students to something as fantastic as minecraft and then afterwards not let them use it?  To answer my question and to bring up the next issue that the teacher will have to deal with is the question of:

Control vs chaos

Here control means that I have a clear idea of which curricular goals we are achieving and I can rest assured that all students have been through the lesson content that has been intended.

Chaos would be that students go venturing in a myriad of obscure directions, discovering, gaping in wonder and building epic structures that they together can marvel at. And all that while - having fun.

But in this case, I chose control over chaos and even though I confined my students to 27 blocks, they still admitted to having fun - most probably because of the time of play that they got whilst not being in the lesson. When evaluating several students mentioned that they liked working with mc because centicubes were unhygienic. 

Later this year I spoke to the student who sparked this idea - I was commenting some of the things he had built in mc, when he proudly presented a castle-like structure. I commented that he must have used some maths to get it all right, to which he reluctantly replied that he actually had.

And with that I would like to conclude that for future minecraft lessons I would like to take a more playful approach, using the principle of first play - then curriculum. I’ll be returning to this statement in my following posts, where I will be documenting and reflecting on an english course I will be doing using minecraft.

For danish readers, here’s a thread I posted on this lesson:

http://goo.gl/uAEdX