Could this not be a classroom as well?

Category: Gaming

Minecraft and Gaming in the Classroom

Don’t let the title scare you off there is actually a benefit to be found in bringing technology into the classroom.  This can be from immersive sandbox worlds like Minecraft, or letting students use video games to prove understanding of other course work.

Focusing on Minecraft, it is a game that is an open world sandbox.  The game mechanics focus around building and creation through blocks and resource gathering.  The trick with this game is that there is no objectives and it is completely open world.  Allowing a facilitator or player to create their own mission or goals.  Logging into the world you start with nothing and are in a completely randomly generated landscape.

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Now depending on how you choose to play the game you can have unlimited materials and just build freely.  Or you can play on survival mode and have to find your own resources.  Starting with cutting down trees for wood, to create pickaxes and mine stone, after some time finding diamond and upgrading your gear.  In survival mode you will be met with a number of challenges.  First of all food, your character has to find food in order to survive.  There are also monsters that will hunt the player at night,  making shelters an essential part of the game.  There are also a number of natural dangers in the game: Falling, Laval, Water.  Players have to make sure that they are careful while being creative.

Our class were given two lessons, the first was the tutorial to the game and the basic controls for playing.   An adventure world that lead us through an obstacle course and basic building process in order to reach a campfire at the end of the adventure. Image preview After understanding the controls we were released onto a creative world where we could build as much as we want.  My friends and i immediately started in on an airship.  After some time our facilitator turned on survival mode and all of us fell to the ground.  Now without materials we set ourselves the goal to make it back up to the floating air ship.  In less then an hour we had built a tower that returned us to our airship ad we concluded our adventure as a success.

This is just one example of how it can be used in the classroom, it forced a group of us to collaborate and develop a creative project.  Dealing with natural adversities of the game as well as sabotage from other groups on the server.  The facilitator finished our class by discussing other uses of the game.  There are hundreds of lessons on the Minecraft EDU website that lay out goals and tasks that help students in a variety of subjects and grade levels.  This along with the personal example of how our facilitator had a group of grade8 students create an ancient society on a desert biome with limited resources.  This helping students to understand the adversities in anxiety society and come up with solutions to problems that may not be present today.  I encourage you to explore the Minecraft EDU website to get a better understanding of how this type of sandbox type world can be used to  help expedite learning.

Dragons in the Classroom

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From Dungeons to Classrooms

My friends and I started playing Dungeons & Dragons three years ago.  Little did I know how much of an impact it would have on my life.  Dungeons & Dragons is a table-top game that has become a bit of a fad in today’s society.  Brought back into the limelight by TV shows such as Stranger Things and Critical Role.  This resurgence has been much better received then when the game was originally released.  So popular that schools have even started to allow this game in their halls.

Dungeons & Dragons or D&D is a game created by a company known as Wizards of the Coast.  A tabletop game like a board game but with a few changes.  What makes D&D so unique is that there is no ending or specific goal, no pre-made board or characters to assume.  The game involves a group of people usually between four and six players known as a party and one moderator known as the “Game Master” or “Dungeon Master”.  These players take on the roles of characters they create, this can be from your classic fantasy hero type, to a knight in shining armour to save the prince or princess or even some characters who are a little more unique such as an angry orc bard who really just wants to learn how to play the lute.  The only real limit to character choice is the players own imagination.  Whereas the task of the Dungeon Master is to create the world for these players to inhabit and follow an “adventure” as well as interpret the players actions and outcomes.purple-and-white dices on white lined paper

The group of players or party are given a series of situations and tasks laid out by the Dungeon master, otherwise known as adventures.  These tasks will take the form of challenges, puzzles, or villains that the party will need to respond to and it is up to the player to respond to that challenge in character.  The success of this response is determined by a dice role, which is interpreted by the dungeon master who will then convey the result to the party.

Seem complicated? Imagine this you have been traveling for three days to return the long-lost Crown of Justice to the queen whose favor you wish to receive.  Though as you are crossing the final bridge you are stopped by a pair of bandits who demand you give over all your possessions.  How do you respond?  Do you strike the bandits with the magic sword handed down to you by your father? Do you try and sneak around the bridge using stealth and cunning to evade conflict? Maybe you try to reason with them using quick words to persuade the bandits to let you pass?  How ever you decide to solve the situation there is a chance of success and a chance of failure, the next step is to role some dice to find out.

It may seem intimidating at first with long time players having a large collection of dice and books, when in actuality joining a game requires little to no money and only a commitment of time.  To start playing most beginners need paper, pencil and a couple dice, these can almost always be borrowed or shared among the group.  The real trick to learning to play D&D is understanding that you, as your character, can really do what ever you like and act in any way you want in the world presented to you by the Dungeon Master.

But what is the benefit of this?  Playing Dungeons and Dragons has been proven to develop several skills, not witchcraft or sword play, but social skills and problem solving, skills schools have been teaching for generations.  Working together in a party of players requires students to learn collaboration and social skills as they must discuss and work together to solve problems that arise. They also get the opportunity to develop problem solving skills and probability.  How good is your character at sword play? Are they a negotiator? Really your potential solutions to problems are limited by your imagination but you have to understand they might not always work. red dragon action figure on table

The Dungeon master needs to understand storytelling and more importantly collaborative storytelling.  The problem with letting six wild adventurers loose on the story you spent months crafting is that they tend to muck everything up.  But being able to adapt to the changes your players make is half the value of running a game.  Maybe the party chose to ignore the pile of treasure believing it was a trap, or they believed the queen was lying and set out on a quest to find the true heir to the throne.  Who knows but working together to create a story is what makes the worlds feel organic and real so adaptability is essential. Dungeon Masters also need to be proficient at creating challenges for players that are fair and engaging.  A heavy-handed Dungeon Master might accidentally make their games to simple or too challenging.  It’s important to find a balance to keep players engaged and wanting to push the story forward.

Dungeons and Dragons along with other table-top games can provide new learning environments that keep students interested as well as learning.  Who hasn’t wanted to help Frodo destroy the ring, or create their own fantasy world to rule?  With the rise in popularity of Dungeons and Dragons organizations and charities have started to offer starter sets to schools in hopes of bringing this enjoyable social environment and collaborative storytelling to classrooms.

Beginning the design process

I recently started working with a program called Sketch Up.  This is a 3D design software used frequently for 3D printing and industrial design. It is the perfect tool for designing my tiny house and potentially in the future printing the tiny house in miniature form to have a real world model to work from.  The surprisingly intuitive platform allows for quick and accurate designs help visualize the project and in a way make it more realistic.  That being said the program does have some quirks and requires some practice to truly master.  Using this program I hope to teach myself to print 3d models and be able to take apart the house for printing.

To get to this point I have had started to do some research into layout design and regulations towards tiny houses.  Using these references to help get a better idea the dimensions and layouts.  Sketch Up like other 3D modeling tools has a steep learning curve however it is one that can be learned through a series of google searches and simply playing with the program.  By the end of next week I am hoping to have this model finished completely along with a rough layout as to cost of materials and potentially have begun printing the model on my 3d printer.  But for now I am happy to see the tiny house beginning to take shape.  If not in the real world but digitally. The Bohemian mobile tiny house floor plan for building your dream home without spending a fortune. Your tiny house doesn't have to be ugly or weird - just look at these architectural masterpieces! Chose from traditional plans to mobile tiny house plans that will allow you to change your lifestyle and travel!