Creating a Virtual World for Mathematics

Abstract

A virtual world was created using the popular sandbox game Minecraft to support the development of preservice teachers’ knowledge for teaching mathematics. Preservice teachers explored the virtual world for a geometry activity involving area and volume problems. They then discussed how this integration of technology could support students’ effective learning of mathematics in a meaningful way. The findings of the study demonstrated that to a certain extent the Minecraft activity supported the transfer of knowledge from preservice teachers’ mathematics content knowledge to their mathematics pedagogical and instructional practice knowledge. Preservice teachers appreciated the usefulness and effectiveness of the Minecraft activity in enhancing the teaching and learning of mathematics by visualizing mathematical concepts in the virtual world. This integration of technology also gave them an opportunity for professional growth. Although this study focuses on preservice teachers’ perspectives on the Minecraft activity, the technology integration using Minecraft will also be beneficial for students because it engages them in active and discovery learning.

Changing the Learning Environment: Teachers and Students’ Collaboration in Creating Digital Games

“…One may assume that the nature of learning the pedagogical model, with an emphasis on teacher-student collaboration, led the teachers to assume greater responsibility in assessing their students' capabilities and make more informed decisions about adjusting the learning process to suit their students. Apparently, the intervention program reveals the future role of teachers as initiators -creative developers of learning activities in a computer environment (Kim & Park, 2018;Magen-Nagar, 2016). Hence, teacher training should be ongoing in order to change teaching-learning processes and promote an active approach based on constructive principles, 21 st -century skills and collaboration between teachers and students in a computer environment.…”

“…The importance of creating teaching/learning games in new environments has been discussed quite a bit over the past decade (Connolly, Boyle, Boyle, MacArthur, & Hainey, 2012;Kim & Park, 2018;Schrier, 2018;Whitton, 2014;Wu, 2018a). As mentioned above, integrating game creation into learning enables one to harness the game for teaching purposes and add it to the K-12 learning continuum (Prensky, 2008).…”

Peningkatan Pencapaian dalam Pecahan: Kerangka Konseptual untuk Pembelajaran Berasaskan Permainan Digital Menggunakan Minecraft

“…Persekitaran dunia Minecraft adalah terdiri daripada entiti berbentuk blok 3D dengan warna dan corak yang berbeza. Secara umum, pemain yang berada dalam persekitaran dunia maya Minecraft ini akan mengumpul (collecting), memecah (breaking), membina semula (reconstructing), mengalih (removing) dan meletak (placing) objek berbentuk blok 3D secara rawak dalam dunia maya tersebut, di mana perlakuan ini membolehkan pemain membentuk sebarang struktur atau binaan dengan manipulasi blok mengikut daya imaginasi pemain (Kim & Park, 2018;Lane et. al., 2017;Ekaputra et.…”

“…Minecraft telah diintegrasi ke dalam pelaksanaan PdPc untuk menyokong pembelajaran STEM (Lane et. al., 2017), geometri (Kim & Park, 2018;Bos et. al., 2014), bahasa dan literasi (Lyngstad, 2017;Bebbington, 2014;Garcia Martinez, 2014;Hanghøj et.…”

“…al., 2017), bahasa dan literasi (Lyngstad, 2017;Bebbington, 2014;Garcia Martinez, 2014;Hanghøj et. al., 2014), geometri (Kim & Park, 2018;Bos et. al., 2014), penceritaan digital dan aplikasi seni komputer (Garcia Martinez, 2014), kesusasteraan (Cipollone et.…”