Paul Admiraal and Elise Allen tested a popular game as a learning environment.

Minecraft is a video game consisting of a block-like world in which players explore and use resources to change the world around them. It is very popular with school-aged children. Video games like Minecraft can be used in education to provide extra motivation for students. 

Lecturers Paul Admiraal and Elise Allen considered whether Minecraft can be used as an effective tool to help children learn Māori vocabulary. They produced a lesson plan and a starter Minecraft world that contains vocabulary to learn. In-game signs point learners to relevant items. A worksheet outside the game demonstrates learners' progress. Paul and Elise also gave learners a survey to complete, to find out what they thought was most and least enjoyable and whether they would like to play again in future. 

A pilot was run at St Clair Primary School with 10 children. Children with prior experience playing Minecraft tended to perform better than those who still needed to learn the controls.  Some Minecraft players were used to the mobile version of the game and were unfamiliar with playing with a keyboard and mouse. Feedback was very positive: all participants would "play it lots" if they had a similar learning-based game available at school. They enjoyed searching for the words through the game. Teachers at the school could envisage many other applications of this technology for classroom learning; it would be suitable for social studies and mathematics for example.  Starter worlds can be tailored for different levels of difficulty too.

For more information contact Paul Admiraal.

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