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Teaching in the Age of Minecraft
- germinalphrase 12y agoThe most significant limitation on bringing games into the formal learning environment is the time investment to make it work effectively. The article notes that teachers want to create their own teaching tools (and subsequently 98% of their content is teacher created) but the take away should not be that teachers want to create this content - but that the commercial creators were not creating useful content on the behalf of these teachers. It's classic design 'empathy' breakdown. The time constraints on teachers operate on several different levels: very limited time for planning, unpaid overtime to prep these materials, and most importantly the limited amount of time teachers can devote To specific learning targets (fast and good is often better than slow and very good). I am actually bullish on the utility of 'games' for education - but I rarely hear a realistic discussion of the constraints on teachers as part of the discussion. For this reason, I see these efforts as far more likely to succeed in non-traditional/informal learning environments.