Minecraft Education: when the virtual brings everyday math to life

Mathieu Thibault

Stéphanie Rioux

Service national

DOMAINE DE LA MATHÉMATIQUE,

DE LA SCIENCE ET TECHNOLOGIE

This research is funded by FRQSC - Engagement

recitmst.qc.ca/minecraft9525

Reminder for getting started with Minecraft

Link to download Minecraft depending on your device

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This presentation, recitmst.qc.ca/minecraft9525 from RÉCIT MST and ’UQO is licensed under the terms of CC.

Presentation plan

• What is Minecraft?
• 3 didactic intentions
• Task exploration
• Research project
• Resources

Where are you with Minecraft?

What is Minecraft?

• Install the software on your device (download) and log in with your Microsoft account.

​

• Getting Familiar with Minecraft Education;
• Basics Controls in Minecraft Education.

​

Multiplayer mode

Chalkboards

Book and Quill

• Junction code
• 30 players maximum
• Same school organization
• Same game version
• Multi-platform
• Different authorizations

Classroom features

• Motionless non-player characters
• Add interactivity
• Give instructions, information
• Provide web links
• Can teleport players
• Can provide resources

Multiplayer mode

NPC

Book and Quill

Chalkboards

Classroom features

• 3 formats: slate, poster, board
• Modifiable or lockable
• Display instructions or information
• To collect traces

Chalkboards

Book and Quill

Multiplayer mode

NPC

Classroom features

• Camera
• Collecting traces
• Documenting an adventure
• PDF file

Book and Quill

Multiplayer mode

NPC

Chalkboards

Classroom features

​

• Multiplayer mode;
• Non-player characters;
• Chalkboards;
• Camera, Portfolio, Book and Quill;
• Complete Playlist;
• Learn Minecraft Education (Microsoft).

​

3 didactic intentions

Exploration

Creation

To sum up

• Task that supports learning a new concept
• Warm-up (math talk)
• Manipulative tool
• Exploration, observation, analysis and generalization
• Inductive approach

Exploration

​

• Task aims at mobilizing learned concepts and processes
• Consolidation of understanding
• Validation
• Flexibility and fluency
• More present in class

​

​

​

3 didactic intentions

Application

Creation

To sum up

• Creative, complex and open-ended tasks
• The student is required to build a unique product, solution or creation, by taking decisions
• A certain number of mathematical constraints
• Different creations and solutions

3 didactic intentions

Exploration

Application

Creation

To sum up

• It's important to reflect on the targeted didactic intention... and to vary from time to time.
• Idea of progression (it's reassuring �to start with application)

3 didactic intentions

Création

Exploration

Application

To sum up

Task 1

In Mondrian style

(Grade 4)

Activity sheet

Task 2

Do you know prisms?

(Grade 4)

Activity sheet

Task 3

In the countryside

(Grades 6/7)

Activity sheet

Task 4

Area of solids

(Grade 8)

Activity sheet

Collaborative research

• Duo of researchers (including one citizen), 3 research assistants
• 8 teachers and 6 math consultants... the 3 “co”s: co-situation, cooperation and co-production
• Co-construction of tasks in 2023-2024
• Data collection in spring 2024
• Analysis underway (preliminary results)

What are the didactic benefits and challenges

of using Minecraft Education

in the teaching-learning of mathematics?

Co-constructed tasks

A few results

DONE

• Reports were written for the recordings of interviews (12 teachers and math consultants), classroom observations (10 classes, 220 students) and focus groups (94 students).
• Analysis of 12 individual interviews (8 teachers and 4 math consultants)
• Thematic analysis brought out themes, i.e. didactic benefits and challenges
• Scientific presentations and conference proceedings

​

TO DO

• Analysis to come for other data (including student productions)
• Other presentations and scientific papers

Didactic benefits and challenges

of using Minecraft

A few results

Overall observations

• Students' mathematical activity influenced by task intention
• Greater potential for exploration intention
• Potential for working on various mathematical concepts
• Difficult to prepare a clear, achievable task the first time around, to anticipate difficulties and students' actions, and then to finish within the required time.

A few results

Focused analysis of 12 interviews: some didactic benefits and challenges to exemplify

​

• Didactic benefits
1. Spatial vision is mobilized
2. The task can benefit from didactic differentiation
3. Virtual manipulatives support learning
4. The status of error is modified
• Didactic challenges
• Construction limited by shape and size of blocks
• Artifacts for recording reasoning are limited

“Minecraft is like life. Except it's a video game.”

(Eve, grade 4 student)

Didactic benefit #1

Spatial vision is mobilized (9/12)

• Immersive environment for viewing from every angle
• Laurent: “The big advantage I like is the 3D part. The part to see �in 3D a reality that is sometimes extremely blurred and imprecise.”
• Marie: “able to see their restoration areas in 3D, unlike the plan where they do it in 2D.”
• Patricia: “everything spatial, being able to represent ourselves.”
• Rosalie: “We're already able to develop a kind of spatial awareness that we couldn't do with pencil and paper. That's definitely a winner. We'd do well to vary the use of these tools more often.
• Myriam: “Students sometimes have difficulty seeing in 3D on the blackboard. With Minecraft, “they can really walk around, touch and count the number of squares there were.”
• Isabelle: “Students can see the solids really in 3D [...] You could really see over the top and see the whole task. It seems that for some, it was more visual and they preferred that.”
• Carl: “I found it so profound in terms of student understanding, in terms of observations, to be able to see in real life, to go through all the sides of the 3D construction on the solids.”
• Noémie: “The advantage is that they can move around and see the different views. I think it's a fantastic way to discover solids. It's better than on paper, in my opinion.”

Didactic benefit #2

The task can benefit from didactic differentiation (7/12)

• Gabriel: “Allowing them to go at their own pace, differentiating the students, it enabled us to create three worlds of three different levels [...] and it allowed us to see the individual understanding of each student”.
• Laurent: “We work with several levels. My students who are very quick, who have skills, who have understood the material, there's still an interest in going further”.
• Rosalie: “It's a tool for differentiating math learning that's easy to get to grips with, thanks to the existence of this whole community [...] Minecraft is a great tool for differentiation. Using it from A to Z, in the same way for all students, may not meet all needs. ”
• Sophie: “It really gives them another vision of mathematics [...] It can bring other tools to their little bag to better understand the subject, ways of seeing the subject in several ways.”
• Alicia: “Daring to do something different, to get away from the more traditional notebooks or tasks [...] it allows math to be developed in a different way [...] It really allows for differentiation, in the sense that those who have finished, the fastest or whatever, can then extend their project, enrich it, develop it further. There's really room for everyone to really focus on the task.

Virtual manipulatives support learning (8/12)

• Laurent: “It still becomes manipulation, even if it's the screen or the mouse. It's the same as picking up my Legos.
• Josiane: “Especially in Cycle 3, manipulation becomes difficult. Students are less inclined to fetch [materials]. In Minecraft, it's more concrete. We're very much into the abstract, but this [Minecraft] makes things more concrete. It supports our teaching.”
• Marie: “With the material, [...] if I'd wanted to work with blocks, with [the order of magnitude of numbers] that we work on in Grade 5, I wouldn't have been able to do it. I don't have enough blocks for that.”
• Gabriel: “It's looking for a different kind of understanding, a visual understanding. With fractions, it's easy, because they manipulate. Instead of being a bit abstract about fractions, putting down blocks helps them understand what a fraction represents [...] will really help and unblock many students”.
• Carl: “Minecraft offers the possibility, with just the app, of doing in real life what you wanted.”
• Alicia: “They represented with materials they might not have had in the classroom.”
• Patricia: “Often there will be manipulation, there will be tools, objects to manipulate in class [...] To physically represent the addition that the student must do, subtraction, fraction, area, volume, perimeter, all that is extremely easy, in my opinion, to do using Minecraft.”

Didactic benefit #3

The status of error is modified (2/12)

• Isabelle: “I think Minecraft is a great way [...] to get students to make choices, try things out, make mistakes, get feedback other than on a paper task. [...] For them, it was easier to erase [a mistake] in Minecraft”.
• Gabriel: “much more efficient at correcting mistakes”.
• Students more inclined to take risks in the Minecraft environment: a construction error can easily be repaired, by building or destroying blocks.
• Instead of seeing mistakes as something harmful to be avoided, they can be seen as a lever for learning in Minecraft.

Didactic benefit #4

Construction limited by shape and size of blocks (11/12)

• Marie: “Of course, Minecraft is square. So anything that's round or triangular, we're constrained a little bit.”
• Patricia: “You can't cut blocks, you can't make round shapes or spheres.”
• Gabriel: “We're always talking about curves and angles, which are more difficult to work on because we're limited by the layout of the blocks.”
• Laurent: “Of course, in geometry, anything angular causes us problems. And [...] I'm not convinced of the usefulness of working with solids, even if they're prisms that are going to be regular [...] That part, I have [difficulty] seeing my added value, versus taking manipulatives”.
• Noémie: “We saw a lot of limits, and we were very disappointed. The pyramids, the cylinders... ”
• Carl: “We had to get over the fact that, no, it wasn't a pyramid. [...] So, the student could construct a bad conceptualization of the pyramid at that point”.
• Josiane: Complexity of scale, which defeats �the realistic nature of Minecraft

Didactic challenge #1

Artifacts for recording reasoning are limited (6/12)

• Rosalie: “Maybe I was expecting better answers in the Book and Quill. [...] The students still seemed lost in exploring the Book and Quill. It was difficult for them to put the transformations into words”.
• According to Noémie, managing traces on Minecraft is less efficient than on paper (from both the teacher's and the students' point of view), especially when it �comes to mathematical symbols.
• Myriam experienced difficulties: since the exponent two is not �written, she was afraid it would create an error (multiplying by two �instead of squaring) and students had to constantly close and open�the Book and Quill to observe the solid, then answer the task questions.
• Sophie asked the students to make a plan to scale before making their construction.

Didactic challenge #2

Math lessons

(education.minecraft.net)

Math tasks

(FR)

Other

resources

Learn Minecraft Education (Microsoft)

To sum up

• Question the concepts to be worked on
• Consider didactic intentions (exploration, application or creation)
• Consider didactic benefits and challenges
• Familiarize yourself with the software �(training, tutorials, student experts)
• Plan your collaborative classroom
• Bring mathematics to life and stimulating!

Questions and comments?

Thanks!

stephanie.rioux@recit.gouv.qc.ca

mathieu.thibault@uqo.ca

Service national

DOMAINE DE LA MATHÉMATIQUE,

DE LA SCIENCE ET TECHNOLOGIE

Mathieu Thibault

Stéphanie Rioux

recitmst.qc.ca/minecraft9525

Description of the presentation

In a world where mathematics is often perceived as an abstract and complex discipline, the use of video games offers a new perspective on learning that is rooted in young people's culture. The serious game Minecraft Education makes learning mathematics more concrete, engaging, fun and close to students' realities. This presentation invites you to explore the potential of Minecraft Education to transform your teaching practice and bring mathematics to life. Together, we'll explore concrete examples of mathematical tasks adapted to different grade levels and notions, according to 3 didactic intentions (exploration, application and creation). In addition, you'll benefit from the results of collaborative research into the use of Minecraft in the mathematics classroom, highlighting the didactic benefits and challenges of this approach.

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