Intro
- Usually run a gamified classroom for the Government/Democracy unit (also links well with Global Connections that follows)
- I split the teams into colonies to simulate the Colonial Australia parts and then they will eventually federate, form a constitution and their own government.
- Classcraft is usually the place to make these elements more engaging and it has a currency in it where students can purchase vanity items. I use this also as a classroom currency.
- This has always been an engaging program for students in the past as they were able to live the unit and see how their actions and decisions can affect the whole of the class.
Having the opportunity to use Minecraft Education Edition, I wanted to add an extra dimension to this by using Minecraft as a virtual realm. My goal for this was to have more depth, and try to reach out to all 100% of the class. In the past, though pretty successful, there were always 1 or 2 students who didn’t engage with the gamified classroom approach. However, with Minecraft, this pulled those extra 1-2 students, as they were more comfortable in the virtual realm to voice opinions and take action.
The main question was HOW could I incorporate this. The goal with the previous gamified classroom was to eventually identify problems in the class world that could be compared to the problems in the school, country and the world. This was also a great link to the next unit, Global Connections.
However, I didn’t need to think too hard as I realised the main engaging aspect of the gamified world was it's sandbox feel. There were rules, but it wasn’t on rails. They could do pretty much whatever they wanted to. If they wanted to aim to be the richest person in the classroom they could do this by trying out different business models, creating a product or even via real estate. Minecraft is a sandbox game as well, so it was pretty much the same experience. All I needed to add was a common goal for them to all work towards - this was to sneakily push them towards federating and working as a nation rather than separate colonies.
The Minecraft Survival Guide by Lucas Gillispie would be that common goal. It was perfect. It had a set of tasks that became progressively more difficult and the final ones would require large numbers of people to complete - much more than a colony of 5.
I also grouped them this year according to their results in the Bartle’s Player Type quiz. I was trying to think like a game designer - create some balance among players so that noone feels alienated or bored. I think that was the most challenging and rewarding part throughout this unit.
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| Very beginning |
The game was initially on Normal mode, but this posed some problems. The main thing was that certain resources held very little value with regards to cross colony trades. Food was not considered important by the Minecraft veterans, as they knew they couldn’t die of hunger - some would just eat rotten flesh and wait out the sickness effect. To counteract this, I changed it to Hard so that hunger can result in death. This kickstarted the trading and dramatically increased the value of food, especially sustainable ones such as vegetables and fruits. I also started to remove some of the border’s border blocks.
The opening of the borders led to some immediate controversies. There were accusations of theft and colonies were fining each other and imposing their own forms of justice. Tensions were rising. One of the golden rules of this game was that if any of the in game conflicts continued offline, the game would automatically be over. Luckily, this never happened!
I used these moments of conflict as opportunities for learning. We looked at alternate solutions, negotiating and compromising. At the time, we were also looking at Australian Federation and suggested this to the class. I told them we could create a parliament and become a nation representing the Commonwealth (I would be Governor-General) and our Assistant Principal, the Queen. This way we could help each other out, 30 is better than 5 afterall.
There was a divide in opinion on this. Half the class were for it but the other half were not. There were debates held in class and students were trying to convince each other during recess and lunch as well.
The day before the referendum on federating as a nation, we looked at the arguments for and against in class. I showed them the pros and cons Australian policy makers had during their debates as well. The looks on some of those students were gold. They saw that there were many common ones such as the poorer colonies would eat away the profits of the richer colonies, and how some colonies did not want a federal set of laws, but rather, enjoyed how each colony had the freedom of creating their own. It was about freedom and opportunity. This was also the same for the other side, one of the main ones being, if the colonies federated, all border’s border blocks would be removed - this would enable military reinforcement at a faster speed if needed.
Just to push things along, the next colony world session, which is what we referred it to, I spawned a LOT of mobs on multiple corners of the map. These monsters would slowly progress towards the mainland and though each colony were able to fight it off, they took a big hit as well.
Following this, the referendum was run and passed overwhelmingly 28 votes for, to 1 against.
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| Post federation |
The colonies were no more, they were now a states within a nation!
After this, there was a little pause in the colony world game, as we changed the focus to more on the parliamentary side. Once the politics were settled, some laws passed and a federal reserve created, they were ready to start moving on to complete the rest of the quests.
Some interesting moments from here include,
- The decision to invade a nearby island as the “Indigenous” inhabitants were aggressive and they voted that it was to ‘civilise’ them.
- This became the basis for the business district that started construction.
- Expeditions were sent out with cartography teams to map our mainland and also explore other lands in the greater world.
- When I had visiting students from other classrooms due to their class being split, if they had no work to do, I invited them to create their own class embassy building on a little plot of land I created for them in our country.
Eventually, the class was able to defeat the Ender Dragon - though it was a little cheaty because firstly, a few boys found the seed of the map, loaded it at home and did the /locate for the stronghold. Also, during the battle, the dragon glitched out so I had to remove and resummon it, making it a little anti-climatic.
On the map itself, it is now more a side project. They are working on their business district and exploring the end city and shipwrecks for treasure to fill their shops with. The idea is that I will be inviting other classes in Term 3 to create their own nations in the world and we can use this map as part of the Global Connections unit, identifying problems, shortages, etc.. in each country, creating a UN like organisation, being really ambitious, and things will probably fail a lot but that’s what I’m going for.
REFLECTION
I really enjoyed this approach as a lot of the learning was in the process, rather than a result. I mean, there were results, but they didn’t really have anything to do with the unit. For example, defeating the ender dragon doesn’t automatically make them learn about how the Westminster system of government works! However, the road to get there required them to do so and that’s where the learning occurred. They also see the effects of these in their own lives, that their voices and decisions really can make a difference.
It also heavily helped them work on their collaboration skills. Some groups were very quick to work together, and they advanced through the quests really quickly, whilst some were much slower. However, when things started to get really bad for those colonies, I was able to step in, mediate and again, use them as learning experiences. You could really see how the class grew as a group, and the lessons they learn in forming relationships, compromising and how actions they cause in one world to one person, can affect them later in a different world by different people.
The world could also use other things they learnt outside these sessions. For example, learning about binary code, I used this to place coordinates for the stronghold around the mainland so they could figure it out themselves if they forgot. They also could use their experiences on their writing and rewriting of their persuasive writing task - Does Minecraft have any educational benefits?
Some things that I can definitely improve on - I need to create a more concrete guideline on how to run this. I only had a very broad idea and ended up improvising a lot, making adjustments on the fly to make players take action. (Inaction, will lead to static, which will in turn lead to boredom) Now that I know some of the things to look out for, I can create a guide, like a cheatsheet on this. It’s also more for other teachers who might want to take this approach, because I think many people, from the outside, will look at this as just play. But so much of our learning comes from play, and it comes from here because we are engaged in the activity - it’s just that we’re not aware of it. I need to do a better job at making them aware of it, using things such as learning intentions, but at the same time, not make it so “in your face” that it seems “educational”. I believe Vsauce and MatPat’s Game Theory and Film Theory videos on YouTube do a wonderful job of this - trick people in to learning. A lot of it is tangential, but another large chunk is from the actual activity as well - big chunk on problem solving and critical thinking.
I recorded a little vlog on some final thoughts, like a rough, progress journal of the journey so far, which can be seen below.
