Week 4: Collaboration with Digital Technologies

The idea for using the Minecraft for history lessons came from my children and husband, who have been avid Minecraft users for some time.  My husband is a Microsoft Innovative Educator and Minecraft Education edition certified and has been passionate about the use of Minecraft in schools. My children and husband often collaborate with friends online, using many different servers, to build a myriad of diverse worlds.  The only difficulty utilising this kind of lesson in schools would be students having sufficient reliable computers, and keeping students to the lesson plan.

Week 4 Question. 

How does the use of technology assist in developing truly collaborative tasks for students? Describe one collaborative idea you have in your content area and the technology that enables this to work.

Response

Minecraft Education Edition is a package available in New South Wales (NSW) provided by the Department of Education (DOE) for students and teachers to download onto their devices (NSW DOE, 2023). It is a “virtual educational platform” (NSW DOE, 2023) where students and teachers can safely collaborate and build their own environments or take advantage of some of the preprepared worlds and lessons available to NSW students.

This technology can assist in developing collaborative tasks in history by asking students to collaborate to build a medieval village, a castle, experience the Eureka Stockade or reenact a battle without leaving their classroom.  For example, students could be divided into table groups and use their understanding of the medieval period to build a castle or village.  Collaboration is needed amongst students in order find the best site and remember what buildings and what types of professions would need to be included.  A recent study found that playing a game like Minecraft can engaged students with the period being studied, help develop historical empathy and opened up classroom discussion (Krappala et al, 2024, p. 13). Further, Minecraft is a programme young people enjoy.  Henderson et al., (2013) found that if students were unused to working collaboratively, students can begin these tasks by working in pairs and build up to working in the larger table group (p. 57).

Smith and MacGregor (1993) advise that in order to properly utilise collaborative learning in the classroom, we need to rearrange how students are compelled to compete with one another. Our current system of “grading on the curve” (Smith & MacGregor, 1993) means students are pitted against each other.  This is something our education systems needs to rethink.  True collaboration means trusting the other student and not competing with them.