Learning Goal
This project is organized as a learning journey that allows cultural learners to explore and engage in an immersive cultural environment, incorporating a technical, visual and artistic learning experience.
Why Learning about the Culture of the Chinese Tang Dynasty?
In America, history studies is usually a mandatory class throughout the K-12 educational system. Teaching history grants students an understanding of how our past constructed the present, shaped the values, and predicted the future on a domestic, national, or global scale. However, we often neglect the importance of learning about other cultures. Exploring other cultures enable students to open their minds, learning about various viewpoints to connect with the prior local history. In addition, students with more historical experiences possess more advantages to relate and connect with local partners as economics and politics develop tightly worldwide.
In our project, we used Chinese culture as an example. Since culture is composed of countless duration, we chose the Governance of Zhenguan, taking place in the imperial Tang Dynasty of China that ruled from 627 to 649 AD. Historians generally regard the Tang Dynasty as a high point in Chinese civilization and a golden age of art and communication culture. Our learning experience focuses on the Tang inventions, rituals, and constructions during the prosperity period of international trading.
Why Minecraft?
Modern learning philosophy is that entertainment and education are two inseparable elements. Educators can incorporate learning with an entertaining and engaging platform like Minecraft. Besides being a video game, Minecraft can be used as an educational tool to foster practical skills like creativity, critical thinking, and analytics. Minecraft could be an inclusive, immersive, and interactive learning platform. Through Minecraft, students can share stories, experiences, and recognition of the accomplishments of others within their cultural identifiers. Furthermore, it empowers students to become more confident and comfortable in the unique “classroom”. It also cultivates students’ soft skills, including communication, team management, collaboration, etc.
In our case, we chose the Minecraft platform as the borrowed learning resource to explore the Chinese Tang Dynasty for culturally interested students, learning about the Silk Road, international trading and commerce, how the trade takes place, and why it developed the most during the Tang Dynasty.
Learning Objectives
Arriving at Chang’an (the capital city of China during the Tang Dynasty), students start to explore a traditional Chinese settlement of royal cities inside Changan, discovering the focused learning subjects for their appearances, usage, stories behind them, specialties, etc.
Cool
Simon, you are a man of few words! Tell us more about why you think the Motivators Journey is cool.
I have zero experience with Minecraft but know that it is quite popular – so I appreciate and applaud your group for meeting learners where they are and reaching them through something they’re already excited about. The intertwining of play and learning is invaluable and has much potential when educators lean into it.
Aside from walking through environments, what are some specific things or ways that learners will acquire knowledge? You mention creativity, critical thinking and analytics but I’m wondering if you can expand a bit on that?
Thanks for your question Cait. As you following through our journey, we will have students to have some readings before they start reaching the world in Minecraft for providing some background info towards that history. And during the class while students finding the locations we set, they will follow the details in the immersive world and research questions we posted to have research online to solve the questions. The paper after class will also make students have some critical thinkings of what they learnt. You can access to those detail contents by clicking the “expand” of Journey content section.
Although Minecraft is exceptionally cool and you did a great job explaining its benefits, I personally don’t favor the idea of exhibiting a cultural context with Minecraft. The reason is simple: it isn’t real enough! Being immersive means that the setting should be convincing, but this isn’t convincing enough for me to get involved.
I also do not have experience with Minecraft, however my younger students, brother, and cousins all played that and were obsessed with it at one point. Minecraft continues being a popular game among various age groups. I think using it as a tool as a means to teach is a really captivating way to engage learners considering the amount of people that are already invested in this game. As someone who does not play, just watching the video is an experience itself.
There are so many skills that can be gained through Minecraft!
This is such a creative idea to use the Minecraft in order to teach people about cultures and history. In my opinion it is also more entertaining and encouraging and makes students tend to not get bored with just reading words but also they could actually engage and see through the things happened in history.
The only thing is that I was wondering if they could choose a specific paths and see where each goes to or learn more details about those events in history.
This looks cool and adorable. As a virtual user, I find it similar to the experience of watching a blogger showing his/her trip to a place online. For the purpose of learning, I think we are supposed to learn the names, background information of each subject we see throughout the minecraft journey, which is more similar to video learning.
+1 with Cait comments. I think this is very interesting although I’m curious to know about your ideas on how can they learn more about the history of the Chinese dynast. Could they maybe interact with characters in the game and acquire inrmation?
I think it’s a fantastic idea as it allows students to kind of choose their own experiences and interact with the unique elements that they find interesting.
My lasting impression of Minecraft was when Columbia University first put its graduation ceremony online two years ago when the school creatively built a scene of Columbia’s campus inside Minecraft. I think it’s a great idea. What I want to know is how this idea can better serve the educational scene at a detailed level.
It is really cool, and I like how you use Minecraft to show the view of Changan. I am wondering if students can create their own scenes by using Minecraft for showing their knowledge.
Your idea of using Minecraft to help students learn the Culture of the Chinese Tang Dynasty is very cool. But I think Minecraft might be a little bit rough and might cause some difficulties for students to learn a culture.
I like your idea of using Minecraft to learn about the culture of the Tang Dynasty. But judging from what the video shows, I think the scenes, characters, and objects are not real enough. This may affect the learning outcomes of students. But it can give students a general feeling about the Tang Dynasty, which is a good start for learning Chinese culture.