Heidi James was our guest speaker to talk about gaming in education. She also had guest student speakers Emma and Jorja to talk about their experiences using Minecraft in education. We started off with discussing our own experience with gaming in schools, and there are definitely ways to incorporate games in education, Kahoot being one example. Games can be used where students create their own questions/trivia that can be shared with classmates. Tinkercad is another great resource where gaming can be applied to building or creating something, much like Minecraft can be used.  Minecraft seems like there are many different educational opportunities – energy sources, math (perimeter, area, volume), design, science/chemistry, coordinates, and a number of others as well. Even “recipe” recognition and memory is needed for creating resources in the game, and students will collaborate to make things work. The students are able to monitor and make rules together within the game and collaborate to find solutions. It seems like there are great opportunities for a very wide variety of learning directions.

I mentioned Super Mario is my go to game, and Heidi mentioned that this could be used for students where they have a chance to use coding to create their own levels or characters in an online Mario simulator. Things like that are a way to get real life application in coding from a fun older game.

An obvious reason for gaming in education comes from learning design – it is created to be engaging and enjoyable so that students want to be involved. It is an opportunity to have learning incorporated with a game they really want to play.