Entry #4: Learning geometry through Minecraft ⛏️

Learning geometry through Minecraft

Video games 🎮. That "thing" hated and loved by our society. When I think about video games, I remember how my parents used to scold me because I played them too much. And well, it is true that I used to play a lot, but don't video games have any benefits? Of course, they have! For that reason, during this entry I want to show you how a video game, Minecraft ⛏️, can be very useful so as to learn geometry. Take a look! 👀

First of all, video games were quite popular among my classmates when I was a student 👦, and it does not seem to have changed nowadays. In that sense, it does not make sense to ignore them during the teaching and learning process, since they take part of our students' lives (Morales, 2010). For that reason, video games seem to be a good tool to teach with the purpose of motivating our students. Therefore, Morales (2010) also says that video games promote skills such as problem-solving, organisation or decision-making 💡💪. So, the benefits are on the table, and taking that into account, I want to mention some geometric ideas to be worked on through this video game. 

Before explaining those possible geometric activities, it is convenient to give a brief explanation about what Minecraft is. Minecraft is a 3D and blocky game in which players have to explore 🔎, elaborate tools ⛏️ and build 🏗️ whatever they want. The fact of being blocky implies that everything that appears in the game has the form of a cube. Actually, the constructions are made from cubes that are combined in a multitude of ways. Taking that into account, it seems obvious that geometry can be found everywhere. So, a first approach could be working on the characteristics of the cubes starting from the basis of the game, which is this polyhedron 👇.  

Geometric activities in Minecraft!

First activity: Building a square and a cube

Then, some geometric activities could be designed. For example, an initial activity could be building a vertical square in order to see how it is, how its edges and angles measure the same... Then, students could be told to give it depth and turn it into a cube, which will allow them to see that step between the 2D world and the 3D world, as well as the relation between a square and a cube, whose faces are squares. Thanks to all of this, students could learn aspects such as area, volume, height, length of sides, angles... 😀

Second activity: Calculating the area and the perimeter of squares in Minecraft!

A more complex activity could consist of making students build a square. Then, they would be told that each block of the sides of the square is equivalent to 5 metres. With that information, they would have to calculate the length of its sides, its area and its perimeter. This could also be performed with 3D solids, adding aspects such as volume or height. Here we have an example of how an activity like this could be performed (do not worry, this video is in Spanish, but the following ones are in English 😜):

That has been all! Here I leave other two videos. The first one is a world decorated with many 3D shapes and solids and the second one is a video of a tessellation project. See you in future posts! 😀

Reference
Morales, E. (2010). El uso de los videojuegos como recurso de aprendizaje en educación primaria y Teoría de la Comunicación. Diálogos de la comunicación, 80, 1-12. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3719704