Reflection: Gamification

Lifelong Kindergarten by Mitch Resnick suggests that all of school should be like kindergarten. By this, he means that students should be invited to learn through what he calls the 4 Ps: project, peers, passion, and play. Instead of projects that demonstrate what students have already learned (e.g., a diorama), students should learn in the process of making, sharing, and reflecting on artifacts. Nowadays with hybrid learning on the rise, educators are challenged with finding ways to incorporate Resnick’s 4 Ps within an online setting that is actually engaging. One popular way to do so, is to incorporate gamification.

“Gamification in education is the process of adding games or game-like elements to a task, with the goal of increased participation and academic achievement.” Yildirim, 2017

One way to add gamification and game-based learning to the classroom is through integrating educational video games into the curriculum. One such game is Minecraft. 

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Minecraft is a first-person perspective video game that allows players the freedom to explore and create within a three-dimensional block-based environment. Players use blocks and other objects to create structures, as they alter the virtual world around them. MinecraftEDU is an educational version of the original game to ensure educators were provided with the tools they needed to bring Minecraft into their learning environments.

Megan Park

In today’s talk with Heidi James, she highlighted that she had been using Minecraft for a number of years in a variety of different subjects. As a middle school social studies teacher, Heidi gives her students the option to use Minecraft as a way of developing and demonstrating their knowledge of a topic. For example, the BC grade 7 curriculum requires educators to teach students about ancient civilizations. Heidi used this opportunity to have her students create and develop their own ancient civilizations involving feudal systems within the game. How cool!

Heidi hosts a server for her students to build upon and plays the game alongside to ensure she is around when there are questions and also to enjoy the game herself. I loved that she had designated leaders in charge of various groups of students. These leaders have advanced expertise of the game and their role is to assist students through their building journeys.

Heidi says that this type of learning gives students a sense of agency and responsibility as they personally control their own choices within the game. Students become emersed in exploring a digital environment where they may already feel competent, and so have a sense of autonomy.

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Here are 10 writing lessons, created by teachers of the National Writing Project Network to be used within Minecraft and Minecraft Subject Kits which are classroom resources for a variety of subjects that can be taught and/or enhanced within the game of Minecraft.

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Photo by Nick Nice on Unsplash

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash