I sat down with my 11 and 10 year old colearners (oh, let's be honest, teachers ) at Nutrition Break today only to find out that Minecraft has been blocked. I don't know why quite yet, but my students believe it is probably due to discussion forums using inappropriate language. Discussion forums?
My learning was stymied. This was very frustrating, but led to an important question: if we are going to open our classrooms to multi-player collaborative on-line gaming, can the games not be designed from the outset to accommodate a school's needs. Could there not be word recognition that automatically logged out players who begin using inappropriate language? Surely with all the analytics being gathered a simple tool could be designed with this purpose in mind. If this happened, would it change the nature of the gaming experience?
Fortunately, my board has a fairly flexible unblocking policy. I have sent in a request to have the site unblocked for my school and am optimistic this will occur.
My learning was stymied. This was very frustrating, but led to an important question: if we are going to open our classrooms to multi-player collaborative on-line gaming, can the games not be designed from the outset to accommodate a school's needs. Could there not be word recognition that automatically logged out players who begin using inappropriate language? Surely with all the analytics being gathered a simple tool could be designed with this purpose in mind. If this happened, would it change the nature of the gaming experience?
Fortunately, my board has a fairly flexible unblocking policy. I have sent in a request to have the site unblocked for my school and am optimistic this will occur.
Heidi
ReplyDeleteI am keen to know a bit more about Minecraft as we have a group of boys who love it and I want to see how we can use their enthusiasm for some educational outcomes. Once it is unblocked I will follow with interest.
ccoffa@edublogs.org
I'm hoping the unblocking will happen by Friday.
ReplyDeleteHi Mrs. Coffa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. Learning to play Minecraft from my students has been one of the most interesting things I have done as a teacher. I am only at the beginning of this process, but it is fun. I encourage all teachers to not just allow gaming in their classrooms, but to become active participants.
How could you find that,thank you for your sharing,
ReplyDeletecookie monster minecraft skin