The phrase "children are the future" sounds so exhausted that we have ended up devaluing it, canceling its true meaning: without education we are lost.
With a beta launched on June 9 and a participation of more than 50,000 students and teachers, Minecraft Education Edition has become one of the perfect allies for educators, to gamify those contents that can be massaidos to the students .
This is not, in any case, a new project but the consecration of a model that has been in development for five years.Since 2011 MinecraftEDU already exists, used in some schools to treat different subjects, from math to foreign languages , from fair trade to the periodic table .
History lessons such as the famous Great Fire of London or an introduction to molecular chemistry, exemplify that the Mojang game offers an alternative to traditional teaching.Every time you take a block and interact with it, every time you mix two elements to create a third party, you are observing these processes "from within." Can you imagine walking through the human body through caves that turn out to be veins, a lesson in first-person anatomy? Don't imagine it, believe it.
CARTOGRAPHY OF THE REAL WORLD
It all started when Simon Kokkendorf, an employee of the Danish Ministry of Environment, saw his son spend the dead hours in front of Minecraft, creating shelters and collecting raw materials, so he decided to use Geodata data to recreate his country.
With the help of his companion Thorbjørn Nielsen he managed to build a virtual Denmark, pixel by pixel: its streets, its orography, each house, monument and river, the biomes of each region and even the last corner of nature.Since then, with different results, this model has helped young people to know in depth their country .4,000 million cubes in more than 1TB of data.
A SCHEME FOR EVERY AGE
Microsoft assimilates this idea to the first and, since then, has provided educators with the tools to build their own replicas.The original content of Minecraft Education includes a map with the aesthetics of Japanese Feudal, to analyze their literary tradition , a scheme of giant molecules to analyze its composition, and even an exhibition of buildings reminiscent of the brutalist architecture of Soviet Europe.
There are up to three different plans depending on the age of the students .These three groups cover different cultural areas:
- From 5 to 9 years: how to create a virtual community, communication, historical framework, estates and State History.With these elements, children can understand how societies are organized within cities, both socially as architectural.
- From 10 to 13 years: prevention of our urban footprint and loss of biodiversity (deforestation, river diversion...), climate change and storytelling.This section is more focused on treating our responsibilities as citizens, to make a Analysis of the expansion of our civilization and understand its impact.
- From 14 years: electric and solar planning, animal farms, sustainable life and construction of a Rube Goldberg machine.This section continues with the geological and ecological line, the concern for the environment, and the eagerness for develop a responsible and consistent personality.
A UNIVERSE TO DISCOVER
Minecraft invites you to explore, to discover an inhospitable world.It lends itself to that the player reinforce his autonomy and lateral thinking , his independence and sense of survival and, also, that they risk in situations of danger.Of all these data you can get a lot of information about how we are and about what facets of us we should improve or strengthen.
Education Edition expands options and expands them through development tools.Propone, in addition to the different exercises mentioned, short challenges, such as building a shelter or solving a puzzle in a certain time.Or leaving a maze.This way is encouraged to exercise the calculation, spatial memory and the ability to deal with abstract problems .
One of the best features of Minecraft Education Edition is in its giant whiteboards, either to express formulas or to present different concepts.It is nothing revolutionary regarding the electronic board of any tablet, but it helps the variety of methods generate a sensation of dynamism , ideal to reduce the boredom or boredom that some students feel before traditional methods.
A PROJECT FOR THE WHOLE COMMUNITY
Minecraft, because of its videogame status, is usually perceived as a prize, a reward that does not fit within the academic environment.Precisely this is another barrier that breaks down, both in the relationship between teacher and student, as that of the parents with their children .The old pedagogical methods have been somewhat exhausted in a world where the first thing you do when you wake up is to check the phone, use it as an alarm clock and contact agenda.It is key to transform that dark perception of video games equal to wasting time.
By mitigating that barrier between parents and children, it also invites the students to worry more about their projects , take them home -there is no need to create accounts new if you already own an old one-and strive to "like".It is not like teaching a book full of accounts, but something visually more powerful, since, on the one hand, it breaks the gap of the old versus the new in sense technological and, on the other, it shows that yes, there are more teaching methods than the book and notebook .
SPOILING EQUITY AND FAIR TREATMENT
In Minecraft we are avatars , a symbolic representation of our image.There is neither the chubby nor the goggles.All students can interact in the environment under the same rules and with the same conditions, and All their roles are pillars with the same weight and value.That is to say: promotes collaborative methodology , the resolution of problems seeking help from the community and not enclosing oneself.
And young people also do not risk: there is no fear of breaking the science material or losing a screwdriver in the Technology classroom.It is a safe environment where risk is minimized and the feeling of failure .
The game license costs 5 euros per year for each student , although you can purchase license packages for centers at a lower cost, but at this point, with a milestone of 110 million copies sold , it is not surprising that the student has his own copy at home.
And this is the determining factor to talk about freedom: a child can develop a project in the classroom and emulate it at home .Learning is more creative, more plastic.You don't need to load knowledge in the backpack.And there is no scheme to enclose the options.
Minecraft is a versatile and creative game that rewards research -there is no single way to build a model-and each player can find their way to the goal.In short, send a message to Very positive student: there are no bad options, but many possibilities.
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