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A teacher on what teaching in Minecraft looks like

March 18, 2014 By Anne Leave a Comment

No need to leave connected learning to the imagination. Well, sort of – plenty is left to students’ imaginations! Teacher Jacqui Murray in southern California spells out in a blog post exactly how she uses Minecraft for students to work on reading comprehension, writing and problem-solving.

She agrees with New Jersey K-8 teacher Marianne Malmstrom on what makes Minecraft so great for learning: “Players start with nothing and must build their way to security, safety, food, shelter, companionship. What a primer in problem solving!” And the applications are limitless, she writes. Colleagues have used the game for building “molecules for a chemistry class, designs for 3D printing, and bridges for an 8th grade science project.”

Murray folds in other digital tools in the process: “We use Twitter as a shared resource, and students become Minecraft Tweeple, tweeting questions and answers using #hashtags. When they solve a prickly game problem, they type #problem with their name into our class Twitter stream and lay it out in 140 characters.”

The interesting thing about all this is that Minecraft and other digital environments work so well in school because they were designed as games, which are especially suited to learning and problem-solving in a fast-changing, complex, networked world. Children learn through play, and a playful disposition is what enables players (of any age) to navigate complexity and rapidly changing information and conditions. So don’t be distracted by the digital part of digital games; focus on the play. Our children were born playful, not digital – digital is just a vast new “place” where worlds of play and learning can happen – if we can just get them into school!

Related links

  • “Why kids need more, not less, play”
  • “Minecraft & the shared, creative safety of gaming & social media”
  • Australian educator Bronwyn Stuckey citizenship learning – a “lived curriculum” in Minecraft, Part 1 and Part 2
  • “Digital media’s power for all kinds of good: One student’s story”
  • Guest blog series by teacher Marianne Malmstrom: “Mining Minecraft” – Part 1 “Little gamers’ digital play through a teacher’s eyes”; Part 2 “Why we need digital environments in school”; Part 3 “Safety & citizenship in games (do try this at home!)”
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Filed Under: education technology, School & Tech, videogames Tagged With: digital environments, games, Jacqui Murray, Marianne Malmstrom, MineCraft, virtual worlds

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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