I’ve been talking with Santeri Koivisto who is one of the head honchos to do with Minecraftedu about issues to do with the game and pedagogy. This post is therefore a summation of what I feel about Minecraftedu and pedagogy.

To start I headed back to the wikipedia page on pedagogy and the following line right at the top stands out:

“Its aims range from the full development of the human being to skills acquisition”

So – how does Minecraftedu contribute to the science of education and the development of human beings and skills acquisition? Firstly I am not trying to be grandiose and claiming that Minecraft is vital to the development of pupils but I do think it is a good tool which teachers can use as part of their armoury in class. I’m not one of these teachers who tends to think in one dogmatic way or another. I think that skilled teachers should be using a range of tools and approaches in class. Essentially there is a time for getting pupils to be facing the front and learning in a ‘lecture’ style format and there is a time for pupils to be learning independently and setting their own tasks and boundaries. This is where Minecraft and its Edu flavour come in.

Well development of a human being and skills acquisition to me go hand in hand. One acquires a skill it helps develop one as a person. In turn one develops in maturity and outlook in life and this could lead the ability to pick up new skills. It’s not a perfect symbiosis but it works.

Minecraft I think does both.  It allows for the general development of pupils and encourages skill acquisition.  It does this through allowing pupils the opportunity to work independently, or as some people might say self – directed learning, but still within an educational environment.  If a pupil is playing Minecraft at home there still may be some benefit but they lose out on the nature and atmosphere of playing the game but within a school environment.  Playing Minecraft at school gives them access to educational support primarily through their teacher so that when they do something within the game their teacher can then respond to that, challenge them and then help shape what the pupil could be doing next.  This to me is part of Minecraft helping pupils develop as individuals.

As for skills acquisition Minecraft’s collaborative nature is the key here.  Yes there is some benefit to pupils being able to design stuff in single player but for me the real and obvious benefit is working as groups in multiplayer.  This is where pupils are being compelled to work together without it being overtly directed by the teacher.  This isn’t a typical classroom where pupils are forced to work in groups by their teacher but a classroom where pupils can either choose to work as a group or not.  I’ve heard two pupils who weren’t even working together negotiate a boundary between their building areas as they found some nice geographical elements they wanted to use which were close to each other.

We spend so much time in school getting pupils to work according to our rules and guidelines that sometimes we forget that they can be quite good at setting up these rules and guidelines themselves through collaborative discussion with one another.  In doing so, as long as there is a teacher present to pick up on pupils and groups who are getting into a negative feedback loop, pupils are without knowing it beginning to build the collaborative team building skills they need for future careers.

If i think about any further issues to write about to do with Minecraftedu and pedagogy I will continue to post them.