COMPUTING VR CASE STUDY: Minecraft Meets ClassVR (Student Age 7-11)
“Students have been invited to join a Minecraft server hosted by the teacher to build individual homes from a central path. The students need to build in a manner which shows how to be a good digital citizen, recognising their footprint and that everything that happens in the world can be seen.”
“From their individual builds, the students then work on collaborative building tasks to construct something for the village to use collectively (for example a park/playground, school, library, supermarket, church, farm/factory business).”
Mark Savery
Age 7 -11 Teacher (AUS)
PRACTICAL SESSION
Within Minecraft, students chose either a house or a building that they built collaboratively. Students used a Minecraft structure block to export their building as a 3D object (Structure blocks in Minecraft). Students opened Paint 3D and using the 3D shape and text tools, students wrote their name with a background rectangle as an embossed plaque on their collaborative build. When finished, students then exported their work from Paint 3D as a 3D object (*.glb file type). These 3D objects were then loaded into the ClassVR Portal and uploaded to the ClassVR headsets and viewed by the whole class (including being able to explore the objects fully through the use of the ARCubes).
IMPACT ON LEARNING
Students were excited to be given building challenges in Minecraft as game-based learning, but they took a further pride and ownership of their creations when they were able to bring their work from the digital world into their physical environment and then manipulate it through the use of ClassVR. Students were able to share their work with other students and staff beyond the Minecraft environment and reflect on their designs, seeing every aspect fully as a 3D object, and collaboratively discussing how they may improve their designs in future builds.
