The Most Successful Video Games In History: Minecraft
Minecraft is one of the most successful video games in history. Its first version was released in 2009 and since then it has not stopped growing. Its aesthetic, far removed from the avant-garde design of modern creation games, has conquered, however, children and young people. There are millions of followers devoted to a unique, changing and three-dimensional world in which everything has a cubic appearance and anything is possible. Also teaching and education.
Class with Minecraft
Lara Romero is one of the teachers who in Spain has dared to introduce Minecraft in the classroom. His project, developed during three years at the Alameda de Osuna School in Madrid, has been a success among the students. Pedagogue and specialist of the integration of the TIC (Information and Communication Technologies) in the educational field, Lara Romero decided to get pregnant in this adventure almost by chance. 'The idea came up because a student showed me a house he had made in Minecraft (then I did not know him) and I thought it was such a spectacular job that I posted it on the classroom blog. The reaction of the rest of the classmates was immediate and in the same afternoon I already had emails from many of the students with their creations or even from their YouTube channels, 'he recalls. For her,
Collateral Benefits
In addition to developing cognitive skills, such as memory, planning and concentration, Minecraft enhances visual dexterity, creativity, spatial coordination, self-control and decision-making. The game allows the child to access their wishes (possible constructions) through a reward system in which altruism is also present. It is another example of gamification applied to the educational field. 'I researched a lot about Minecraft before I started using it with the students and I liked the educational profile, because of the use that was being given to it in other countries. For me it has been the bridge or the excuse to teach other things ', highlights Lara Romero. 'In addition, it is a creation game in which the student enhances their creativity and digitally captures it. It's a game without limits, where the limits 'you put', as my students say.
We can not forget the oculo-manual coordination, since everything works through controls on the computer keyboard and in a 360 degree space ', emphasizes the teacher. Aware of the great potential of the game in Education, there is already a version dedicated to the school world: MinecraftEdu. Joel Levin (www.youtube.com/user/MinecraftTeachr), a New York teacher who has been using this game in school for years, has participated in its creation. MinecraftEdu contains specific tools to prepare the classes, adapting the environments to each subject. In this way, the Minecraft worlds fit every lesson and are available even for teachers not well versed in technology or video games. MinecraftEdu allows to combat one of the disadvantages of using this videogame in school. What to do when the students, instead of doing the agreed thing, dedicate themselves to playing without more? The educational version of this video game allows the teacher to redirect the child to the map or stage where the class is developing or to warn him, by means of a message, that he does it by himself. At the moment, MinecraftEdu, dependent on Microsoft, is successfully used in more than a thousand schools located in Finland and New York.
