Development of intellectual and scientific abilities through game-programming in Minecraft

Alessandro Bile

doi:10.1007/s10639-022-10894-z

Abstract

In recent years, the technological revolution has changed the way we see reality and interact with it. Inevitably, education and didactic planning have also had to deal with new technologies. Indeed, the presence of digital tools has radically changed people’s lives since childhood. Many educational realities have exploited this digital transformation to speed up and specialize learning, customizing study plans and type of software according to age groups. The activity of the Digital Education Lab is part of this context. It is a digital education school which uses the game software Minecraft Education Edition to teach its students the fundamental principles of computer science, geometry and mathematics. This article discusses learning key science concepts through game learning. The analysis carried out allows to see that students are facilitated in learning complex scientific concepts when these are shown through the game and can therefore be “experienced”. The learning of 186 students aged between 8 and 10, who are generally at the first approaches to the digital world, has been evaluated. To evaluate the acquisition of knowledge through these innovative methods, at the end of the didactic course we have administered anonymous tests through the Google classroom platform. The results show that learning through a game-software facilitates the learning of basic scientific information as well as fostering the capacity for interconnection and transversality.

Highlights

The reality we are experiencing is dominated by the digitization process
In this work we briefly report the teaching method of the Digital Education Lab and we discuss this type of educational path, analyzing the results of the tests that were administered at the end of the course
The results reported in this work concern 186 students of the basic course who participated in the Coding course through Minecraft Education Edition in the year 2020-2021

Summary

Introduction

This word, which is often seen by the more traditionalist educators in a negative sense, indicates a path of conversion from the analog world, dominated by continuity, to the world of computers, characterized by discretization This translation is manifested through sequences of very fast electrical implusions which are considered as harmful to the mental development (both from the point of view of synaptic connections and of consciousness’ formation and of identity) of the child. The absence of the physical aspect determines a drastic decrease in attention After this critical age, sufficient abstraction skills have developed to be able to learn by the dialogue with a “screen”. Digital teaching has proven to be able to transmit basic knowledge through alternative methods, often more appreciated by young audiences (Bar-El David & Ringland 2020; Brown et al 2021)

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