My minecraft construction: ‘an approximation of the real’
Burning bridges – the intense frustration of setting fire to a bridge, putting it out and inadvertently creating a waterfall and then ending up with a block on top of it all….. an hour of work up in flames….
When I entered the IDEL realm in Minecraft, I was completely out of my comfort zone and put off creating anything until the very end of the week. I was at a loss as to how to proceed and it was humbling to be given strict demonstrations by my two sons. How the tables had turned!
When I teach children how to use the internet when teaching them research skills, I warn them about keeping to keywords, about the danger of going down irrelevant ‘rabbit holes’, about wasting time and not seeing the wood for the trees.
Creating my learning space in Minecraft involved me doing everything I usually warn against! I forgot about the ‘learning objectives’, I became immersed in irrelevancies, such as trying to catch a cat and setting fire to my bridge. I forgot to come up with an innovative design for an educational space and instead spent hours planting crops and ‘spawning’ livestock.
Then came the awful realisation that what I had built potentially didn’t fulfil any of the questions that I had been encouraged to consider. Questions such as: how might the build support inclusion or broaden access to educational opportunity? and, how might the build help to explain a complex idea?
I had been so ‘immersed’ in the activity of creating that I had totally forgotten the original remit: to create a learning space.
This is a very relevant consideration when it comes to integrating technology with education. If you are not careful, the learning objective can be totally lost as the students are caught up in the technological logistics of a task.
Did it matter that I was sidetracked into building an eco-farm, off the grid, self-sufficient with veggie patch, solar panels and wind turbine? Did it matter that I had turtles breeding, rowing boats to see the dolphins and a large red wool tent in the garden? No, it didn’t. It was a fine example of spontaneous learning, or as I have quoted before ‘ambush-learning’, as described by Bayne (2015). And, when I put my mind to it, I realised I had, in fact, created a useful and plausible learning space. My space is like Flint’s aim in the virtual Jupiterland project: “to build a virtual facsimile of an extraordinary real-world environment that we can exploit for investigating virtual and mixed reality experiences”. (Flint et al 2018: ‘Virtualizing the real: a virtual reality contemporary sculpture park for children’)
In the course thus far, one of the concepts we have considered is the instrumentalisation of technology within education. There is also the concept that ‘pedagogy must lead the technology’ (Cousin, 2005 ‘Education in Cyberspace’). As a teacher I have found this is a fashionable mantra that is emphasised in schools whenever possible. Yet Cousin argues that we should critique this concept and statements such as ‘technology should follow the learning and teaching objectives and not the other way round’. For me, that is to totally re-think how I might use technology as a teacher, which is a bit discombobulating.
Exploring Minecraft is making me re-think this relationship between technology and pedagogy. Most of the papers I have read in the last month all argue that technology and pedagogy should be as intertwined as possible and one should inform the other. What is so clever about Minecraft, is that neither technology nor pedagogy need dictate the other. Could we say that it is a fine example of learning through technology (a concept posited by Sian Bayne and also Selwyn).
What did I learn? I learnt what it is like to be a learner again. I learnt all sorts of problem solving skills. I also learnt from my peers, as well as my children. Unexpectedly, it was not an isolating experience; I had a couple of long chats within ‘the realm’ with fellow builders and we started talking about our own ‘real lives’. I didn’t expect to get to know people that way. I eyed with envy the builds that others came up with and marvelled at their creativity and patience. I also learnt that Minecraft Education exists, with all sorts of brilliant lesson plans, and have reflected how one could integrate Minecraft into education in a more formal setting.
Cousin quotes the idea that new technology becomes an extension of ‘our nervous system, which imprints our imagination with the realm of the possible. Could I suggest that Minecraft does exactly that?
minecraft build – screenshot of Miro page Emma Morton
(Both recordings were done ‘live’, without my sons realising, but they have subsequently given permission for me to share them on my blog)
Yep, I had to rely on my kids explaining Minecraft to me when we first started using it (they were impressed with my Second Life skills but thought – correctly – that I was rubbish at Minecraft). The audio files are a nice addition here. Your post does suggest the importance of the student’s/ learner’s ownership of their learning space and of experience some level of immersion in that space. the point you make in the Miro board about your build not explaining may be correct in detail but may well help in demonstrating a complex idea.
The Cousin’s point about critiquing the ‘tech should follow the pedagogy’ idea is a useful one to expand on. Given our institutional constraints – especially that of constructive alignment – Cousin’s critical point can seem like its a tricky one to implement. It can go beyond rethinking teaching practices, but also what we expect from students as well (accepting that pedagogies are co-produced one way or another). As you say, quite discombobulating! Your point about Minecraft as an extended realm of the possible is a good one – I’ve really enjoyed following former students on this course as they’ve experimented with using Minecraft in everything from history lessons to teaching Python.