The insights
Insights from themes
There are two points to take away from these themes. Firstly it is clear that their sample of 10 students had varying interests when it came to exploring Minecraft and Teats Hill. As a result, this presents an opportunity to tailor another future project to fit these wants and needs. For instance, creating another virtual park in Minecraft and establishing specific tasks for the students to perform that would nurture and encourage their exploring, building, engineering, and/or conservation interests. By doing this, it is possible to foster individual intrinsic motivation towards learning about ecological issues and local green spaces.
Secondly these themes emerged from the data collected during the field trip workshop and the Minecraft workshop. Hence, they have supported the idea that a student’s interests in the real world, overlap into the realm of simulated worlds. This further supports the validity of using Minecraft as an educational tool in classrooms, to address important factors relating to the real world.
Impact of a virtual world
As previously stated, Leigh and Lucy focused on a number of tasks during the Minecraft workshop to encourage interaction with the Minecraft version of Teats Hill and promote curiosity in nature. These tasks included caring for bee hives, planting wild flowers, building playground equipment, and creating a galleon. The data collected showed that these tasks were very successful in getting the students to think, learn, and explore.
For instance, when asked the question “What was the best thing you learnt from playing Minecraft today?” one student replied “I really liked learning about the bee hives. I liked checking them every now and then”. Additionally, when asked the question “What was your favourite thing to do in Minecraft?” one student responded “I like making the slide and shelter” whilst another student answered “build new things and see new things”.
This exemplifies the use of Minecraft as an educational tool and an instrument in promoting local green spaces. Minecraft allows you to exhibit a local green space from novel perspectives, allowing individuals to interact with it in different ways thus, promoting curiosity in that space.
In terms of promoting footfall to Teats Hill, when asked “Would you like to go back to Teats Hill after exploring it in Minecraft?” a significant majority of the students replied “Yes”. A similar response was also received when asking the question “Would you like to explore Teats Hill again inside of Minecraft?”. Again, this illustrates how powerful Minecraft is; it sparks curiosity in children and allows them to discover real-world topics and concepts through a different process.
Reflecting on Teats Hill trip
During the Minecraft workshop Leigh and Lucy observed a variety of student behaviours that reflected their observations from the field trip workshop. For instance, one student was keen to implement various sea-life in the Minecraft world (crabs, sea gulls etc); which is something they discussed and observed at the real-life Teats Hill. Other examples of this manifested itself in planting wild flowers and caring for bee colonies; as students mentioned that they would like to see more examples of wild flowers and insects in Teats Hill.
All of these behaviours can be seen in the Minecraft screen shots in the gallery below. This demonstrates that the majority of students are interested in their local green spaces and that there is a great opportunity to transfer these behaviours, from virtual worlds to the real-life green space. Encouraging students to consider real problems and find solutions for virtual wildlife and green spaces, also fosters intrinsic motivation to engage in these areas.