Discussion Question 1

Admittedly I have minimal experience with Minecraft despite having three children. Both my seven year and five are still heavily into the Minecraft beta, lego! After going through the site and some of the implementation strategies I do agree, Minecraft can essentially support any learning theory, but I keep coming back to humanism. With the freedom to build anything, anywhere with any sort of material, customizes, personalize, construct, and tear down Minecraft offers a blank canvas within which students impart their own ideas and creations. Although guidelines can be created lessons plan structured around Minecraft seem like they would be more like guidelines that are facilitated where students are discovering, making their own choices and decisions either collaboratively or individually. Despite these positives there are some concerns that I would I have around screen time for kids – they are getting enough of this outside of school, the last thing they need is to spend hours on end in front of screen during school hours. Second, with resources consistently being slashed it would be a significant challenge to implement any sort game-based learning extensively across the curriculum. Schools don’t have the resources for hardware, fast Wi-Fi or tech support staff to support a wide-scale implementation unless we move more in the direction of BYOD which is not without its own problems.

I've been using Minecraft for a number of years now, even played it when it was in it's infancy. Good game, but the game has changed so much based on the gamification of it, which is irritating. The game does however adopt numerous learning theories, from constructivism to play. I was actually interviewed this year by UBC. Here are my thoughts on Minecraft and how I've used it in my classroom. http://ets.educ.ubc.ca/teaching-with-minecraft-an-interview-with-met-graduate-dominic-maggiolo

Although I believed gamification is an important concept in the learning space, I never learned more. I applaud this OER for giving me a concrete idea of how it is being pursued. The idea of immersion in a simulation to learn more is very fascinating. The history of learning started that way, where humans learned from nature, by observing, feeling, and experiencing. This is like the best of both, Where you can provide that immersive experience for the learner as well as create a direction. After watching the video on Animal cell, i realised that there were concepts which I never understood when I had read about the same topics, and this is a much better way of putting things in proper perspective. Especially for biology lessons, like human anatomy. Lessons on physics, atomic models, 3D mathematics, all these have a brilliant scope if not already pursued.

This weeks OER has provided a great introduction to the relationship between games and learning. I was relatively unfamiliar with MinecraftEdu, and found the explanation around learning theories and their application to the use of this particular game very enlightening. The learning theory I was most interested in was Behaviourism. Video games, at their core, are about providing sufficient motivation for players to be engaged and motivated to continue playing. The success of any video game is due in part to the physical (involuntary) reactions that the act of playing evokes in players, a response to ‘environmental stimuli’. Here is a quote from Dr. Judy Willis, a neurologist about video games and education… “The popularity of video games is not the enemy of education, but rather a model for best teaching strategies. Games insert players at their achievable challenge level and reward player effort and practice with acknowledgement of incremental goal progress, not just final product. The fuel for this process is the pleasure experience related to the release of dopamine.” We as humans are hardwired to want to repeat pleasurable experiences, and as such the effects of the context of the learning environment can have a significant impact on the ability of learners to learn. Video games also have the opportunity to re-define what failures means in education; a lack of success the first time does not result in failure, but rather an obstacle that one must try harder to overcome. Video games used for learning create an educational culture focused less on outcome, and more on the process of achievement. MinecraftEdu can help us to see Behaviourism learning theory through its ability to re-shape learners responses to educational activities using features such as reward systems. (Here is a link to the article by Dr. Willis if you have an interest for some further reading: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neurologist-makes-case-video-game-model-learning-tool)