Experiences of MinecraftEDU

New to use Minecraft in education?

I have some experiences to share...

They need a ruler

If you think you as a teacher shouldn't be needed anymore when you add a game you're wrong. I thought so myself, but had to change my attitude after my very first 36 hours in game, the time it took for my students to build up a city and started to argue about childish things (scale of houses, amount of houses, roads and such). And we started the vanilla server on Thursday and Saturday morning I had to clear out some conflicts...

During those first 36 hours they had built what you see in the first 1:40 minutes in this clip. What comes to city building you could use this Swedish site Futurecity.nu and it's lessons plans (lektionsplaner) and use Google Translate on it, that would be enough to get inspiration.

Student democracy works to a certain limit but you as the teacher have to be the president of your new world. Students can be prime minister, minister of transport, minister of education, Minister of agriculture but you can't leave all responsibility to only students!

Your present in the classroom or the virtual classroom have never been as important as now. You need to have them focused on the target and your goals, they need your guidence.

Besides been doing a full scale practice of using a government in Minecraft (without add myself as president) I have also tried to mirror a student group as a company (nuclear power) and I got the same result / experience. 

The emperor Teacher is vital in game!

Small modules rather than a large entity

What went wrong? Well, the whole (task) became too large. They didn't know where to begin and therefor they did anything (else) but what you (as a teacher) had planned or hoped for. 

I once had a modded server with industrial craft, and as that mod enable you to make nuclear power and nuclear weapons I thought that was a challenge they would be interested to solve.

What I thought they should build (picture from here)

What they actually built

First when I stepped in and gave everyone a task to fulfill they started to come closer to my master plan. But I had to make them understand they needed to have builders, workers, woodcutters, guards and more. Expecially when you add a game, a chance to work in 3D, students struggle with the big picture. With that said, they have easier to understand coordinates in Minecraft (3 axes; x, y & z) than on paper (2 axes; x & y), an example here. 

Before they start to build they should have a working gameplan!

The SAMR model

If your biggest challenge is that you're afraid of boring the kids when you start each lesson with "build a model of..." you don't yet have realized the full power of Minecraft.

I know SAMR model is severely criticized but when you use Minecraft in education it's a very good tool to use, I've bloged about it here.

If you only tell your students to "build a model of..." you havn't changed the task enough to achieve more learning. You're only on level two of the SAMR model: augumentation.

You have to change the task, and it's here many teachers start to criticize the SAMR model as you now have to change your course content which, of course, mean more work for you. Deeply sorry, but those teachers are not only lazy but also to blame that students of today loses interest of education. 

As my school now should use the SAMR model, our teacher's usually not come any longer than step 2: augumentation and here's my favourite example. In the mother tongue course you should read a book and write an essay of it, let's check SAMR model:

Substitution

Instead of write the essay on paper, students now write it with Google Docs.

Augumentation

Students collaborate in google docs and are also able to comment each other work.

Modification

Students read the book and build the book in Minecraft

Redefinition

Students roleplay the book story inside Minecraft, make a movie of it and upload it to Youtube. You have to come up with a storyline, you have to document the whole process and while do that you can prove you have understood the book in several ways than just on paper.

Now we have changed the task from only read the book and write about it to experience it and also transformed it to a complete new task.

Cross curriculum

Next thing that traditional teacher's hates: when you adopt tech in your teaching, you're also going cross curriculum. The book example above is not only language but STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

So, the good thing is, if you're colleagues are open minded, they don't have to use a game in their classes, but use the magic of it. For example, we're now have eSport as a free elective course. The best way to help our students to improve in their hobby is to help them with exercises in the gym (strength and endurance), language teacher have the course as a discussion topic, math teachers can use the topic to probability theory, the four operations, percent and statistics.

Lego

If you need inspiration what to build, use plain LEGO instructions. Together with my daughter we've built Friends Lego inside Minecraft where she had to reflect over scale, math, problemsolving and be creative.

Previous examples and experiences:

• Technical drawing, math and scale
• Math & Physics, velocity mostly
• Math, inspiration
• Math, geometry test including the test (linked)

Viking Village

So I have this math course inside Minecraft with a student who learn in a different way. He also fears math so we need this safe environment where to learn. 

I don't have to succeed with all these qualifications but some, the student should be able to

1. can express relationships between variables with mathematical expressions
2. can form and make up equations, expressions, tables and drawings related to their fields
3. solve mathematical tasks required at work using equations, deductions or charts
4. to assess whether the results are correct and the right order of magnitude
5. can apply economic mathematics needed in everyday and working life, such as profitability, cost, tax and loan calculations
6. to collect and group information related to their own industry.

The challenge is when it says "related to their own industry", luckily it also says "needed in everyday and working life" and that's an easy one. We're aiming for number 3, 4 and 5 as you can do that inside Minecraft and also have lots of discussions outside game how it relates to the everyday and working life math.

As my student could choose we now build a viking village. First he had to draw sketches, make a game plan, then start with the palisade and townhall. As my daughter - little_aquavera - every now and then joins me the village suddenly got a third tribe member. 

My daughter 8yo joined with the words "you can't fool me! I will not do any math!" and that might be true, but she needs to practice writing, reading and spelling and that's exactly what she's doing! During the summer semester she learned English just by watching YouTube and now she starts to write it.

Back to the math!

So here we suddenly have a guy, that doing math all the time with a smile on his face and as the world is vanilla survival he (or we) have to collect all the resources that's needed. We also need food and animals.

Suddenly we reached a breaking point and it was my daughter who started it. As she ain't that brave what comes to mobs she had started to think about what she could contribute to this village and came up with a book shop. She's now the poet of the Viking village. She also started to put pricetags on her work.

It was time to gather the village councils.
At the first council, in game, we agreed on what currency we should create and how to use it. 

• 1 Emerald = 10 Lapis Lazuli
• 1 Lapis Lazuli = 10 gold ingots
• 1 Emerald = 100 gold ingots

At the second meeting, in the classroom, my student had to come up with an idea what everyone's work would be worth. Also, if some profession needed something extra as armor, weapons or tools. 

At the third council, now together with my daughter and in the classroom, he had to start think about taxes. And suddenly this was so fun so even the little poet was doing math, mental arithmetic and put notes.

They both agreed on planning and monitoring is vital and important. That includes also democracy (civics) and active citizenship (key competence for lifelong learning). Both also agreed it's in the realization phase they're learning.

For example; the soldier got paid with 20 lapis lazuli and 20 gold ingots. The tax is 1/5 (20%) and he have to give me (the Jarl of the village) that amount. Also, when he collects animals, he have to give me (the leader 1/5). 

With the evaluation, we're connecting today's lesson and connect it to the everyday and working life. And suddenly he understands.

The product: the lustful learning

As a remedial teacher I usually gets those students who have one or more challenges (I refuse to say difficulties or problems!). Now I help one student and the more I talk with him, the more I start to wonder why we - the school system - insist on teaching like it would be 1980 and not 2016. Even if the Internet didn't exist throughout the teacher's life, there have been in our students' whole lives. 

This one student is judged by the 1980's methods and therefore he possesses not what the knowledge society requires. If you, on the other hand, use the methods of 2016 he actually master the skills needed more than many else.

According to traditional values, he has an abnormal and unhealthy interest in video games and no matter what he does, they consider it as dangerous gaming. Still, traditional thinking, he needs help and support in mathematics, physics, languages, social situations. He can't handle money (he doesn't understand the value of money), can't hold times, can't think logical, need a calculator and the list goes on and on and on...

When I first met him, the Fall of 2014, he was top 20 in the European league of "World of Tanks" and besides that also second in rank in his clan (including set up strategy's, handle price money and be the ambassador). Now, he has stepped down from the active gaming and instead run the whole clan by himself. 

Just to check if he was aware of what he's doing I showed him the school's organizational chart and asked him to tell me, based on this, how his organization looks. Hardly surprising, he placed his organization in the right places; CEO, deputy CEO, management, economy and so on. He also explained how he pay wages (in game money) to his whole clan (approx 75 people), the bonus system he use for unsocial hours (if they get attacked for example 04:00) and more. "doesn't understand the value of money"!? What a rubbish nonsense!

So, as you all understand, this is a guy that learn in a different way but in a way I think will be only more common. And just because they do learn a different way it's not because they are stupid.

But today, 2016, the school ain't ready for those students so therefor we're back at square one. Here we need the remedial teacher (me)...

According to regulations I should ask the owner of the course (who use traditional methods) about course content to use on this student to help him understand the things in an outdated view. To clarify: it is not up to me to interpret the curriculum. 

But now it felt so wrong, I over ruled the regulations and went to my supervisor and asked; do I help this guy as the individual teacher wants or can I interpret the curriculum myself? 

For the record, it's very clear in the curriculum what you need to know so there's no law broken, but different interpretations juxtapose.

I got the decision: interpret yourself as it won't work otherwise.

Now, to my lot, I have math and physics. I would actually have to have even the language, because if you're not from the start English-speaking, you become it through computer games.

And here's the funny thing; when you use games in education, you not only teach one course at a time. You can combine, you can do both, you can learn more, you can learn faster and suddenly you also have the lustful learning. The desire to learn and the desire to understand. 

Because it's fun. 

The environment is safe; therefor you can relax and start to learn.

So math and physics. 

And Minecraft. 

Because Minecraft is "AWWSOME!"

Even if you're 18 years old.

To be able to solve the physics we have to start with math. And survival (great choice!) as it's more fun. Yes, more fun and math is present all the way!

"1 coal smelts 8 blocks of iron ore. Burning time of one coal is 80 seconds while burning time of one lava bucket is 920 seconds more. What is the burning time of one lava bucket?" (from the Gameplay Publishing "Minecraft Maths")

It was an easy one; 920+80=1000 seconds.

Next examples are my own, not from the book!

But next one, according to the reports, he would need a calculator: How many minutes is 1000 seconds?

In his head he calculated 16 minutes.

And he had to explain.

"60 seconds multiplied with 10 is 600 seconds. Then I know I have 400 seconds left. 60 multiplied with 6 is 360 seconds. That's 16 minutes. Then of course you have another 40 seconds, so 16 min and 40 seconds if I have to be exact!"

He continued: "if we assume I can fill/empty the furnace constantly I will get 100 iron ingots after one lava bucket, as the burning time for one ingot is 10 seconds"

Now the idea is that we should do the physics part: velocity calculations and for that we have created racing tracks. We will measure how long it will take to walk, run, ride horse, swim, use boat and use minecart for 100 blocks (100 metres). We have already talked about cars speed, your walk speed and so on, but next week we'll figure out how to also do the calculations.

You are doing it wrong dad!

Doing it wrong?

According to who?

I still don't now what she - AquaVera - meant by that. Or, is it possible that learning can't be fun??

As I want to encourage her to read more I'd set up some tasks, a school, in our Minecraft world. Her teacher want the kids to practice reading for 15 min a day. So I told her the great news: "I've set up some reading exercises for you!"

And she started to scream: 

"Noooo! It's Saturday!!! I don't want to do homework!"

"OK", I told her, "if you change your mind later we can start Minecraft"

1. "Minecraft!? wait! I'm coming!!"
2. "You have to join me! Come! With YOUR computer dad...

But she did also let me know, I'm doing it wrong! And wrong, I have another approach to the problem as the teacher has ...but as she didn't want to hurt my feelings she tried. 

(Kalle (dad) is building a school)

But how to tell dad, the words were too long...?

She wanted to show me, rather than just tell me, what the problem was. 

"You see dad, we started with 2-letter words, then we continued with 3-letter words and now we try to learn 4-letter words!"

So I had to read the sentence, she corrected me and we discussed it in three (3) languages as she tend to start talk English in Minecraft. (She rehearse to be able to join Wizard Keen in a WonderQuest episode).

Then she started to do the reading exercises. "Kaksi lehmää" (two cows) and she found the right (cow) eggs. We continued to the sauna, kitchen and bedroom. She was confused. Every single room was empty, only signs on the wall.

We went out again, outside the room. Spelled S-A-U-N-A and entered the room with new courage: she understood the signs described what to build inside the sauna.

Benches wasn't a problem but the heater, or more exactly, the way she built the heater. Lava and wooden floor ain't a good solution, so she had to fill the room with water... When she had to build the shower, she went out to a test area just to be sure nothing more unwelcome should happen. I think her shower is brilliant, it's working in her fantasy and she has also both warm and cold water. And even if you don't have water you still need the edges.

By practice reading there's a lot of unintentional learning that occurs: 

• lava = fire, you must be careful with fire
• water extinguishes fire
• experience changes the method
• languages
• math

So I started to wonder: 

What exactly is she learning?

Or even more interesting:

What does she feel she might be learning?

Is she aware of the learning process?

WHAT do you learn, WHEN do you do it and WHY do you learn? Big questions, but interesting ones.

AquaVera: 

I learn to read, when I practice, discuss and build. I learn because its fun and I can build it."

And I asked myself the same question: 

"I learn Finnish words, how they are pronounced and spelled. I learn when we are discussing and I learn because it is fun."

But again: How could this be wrong????

Is there really only one right way to learn???

Can't learning be fun???

The reading homework

AquaVera has started first grade and they have homework every single day. In addition to mathematics and spelling, they must also practice reading for at least 15 minutes.

But as the language they learn is Finnish (which I struggle with) my wife (AquaVera's mother) does that part. Yesterday I started to thought how I could help, relieve my wife and give my daughter another way to practice.

Minecraft.

How can we benefit from our gaming interest?

First I tried this and failed:

• Lots of text in one sign was too hard.
• One word at one sign didn't make sense, she didn't put together the words into sentences.

Instead, I started to make those animal pens. The keyword with both uppercase and lowercase letters and in her (second) mother tongue Finnish.

So what happened?

She began to spell out the word, pronounced each letter and put together words. The reward attracted, it was something as simple as put out the right block in the animal pen.

Suddenly she had cracked the code:

"L-A-M-M-A-S! Lammas! Det är ett får! It's a sheep dad!"

With traditional methods she was learning one (1) language, with game based learning she connected three (3) languages! The Power of Minecraft...

Minecraft Math

My very awesome colleague Edward starts to be a really splendid MinecraftEDU teacher! He really thinks out of the box and for example one of the first thing the students should build was a hexagon. 

And I thought for myself: 

How on earth will they succeed with that and at the same time learn Pythagorean theorem?

I had not had to worry about.

They wasn't supposed to build the line but finding the correct coordinates. When find the right spot put a sign with the groups name on it. At each hexagon corner each group started to build their own math area.

As you rarely starts at the coordinate (0,0) the first thing you had to do was to find origin. The class did chose themselves to each side (of the hexagon) would have the distance 100 and therefor the height should be approx 87 blocks.

Away you (they) go to find the location...

Out of the box thinking

Coordinates, not lines of blocks! 

Why havn't I thought of that??

One other thing that's truly amazing and also serves as a good example of minecraft tend to be cross curriculum. 

We're not only learning geometry (what's this course is usually is about) but also the coordinate system (the next math course), programming (python) and a foreign language (English (vocabulary))

He made the class to navigate where to execute python online! Copy-paste this code:

It's a formula for the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with cathetus x and y, the distance between the two points (x_1,y_1) and (x_2,y_2).

Also, he and the class, also found this awesome tool Mineconics where you can draw geometry figures with an online tool and later build the same inside Minecraft, like lines, rectangles and circles.

Math with MinecraftEDU

Yesterday a 18 yo student came to me and asked "are we going to play Minecraft the whole course? You see, I've grown tired of play Minecraft (and now play CSGO)" and of course this student had arrived an hour late so he had missed my lecture. 

My first reaction:

Play Minecraft?! Am I really that unclear or don't you listen at all? The Minecraft part of this course is to have a real code project to analyze, problemsolve, plan, make pseudocode, flowcharts, document, test (inside Minecraft and ComputerCraft), evaluate and report. If you're only playing Minecraft you're doing wrong! And the first step to do right is to start listen.

Second reaction:

Unfortunately it came one hour later, but really? Do you have the guts to go to your other teachers and say the same thing? Hey you teacher, I'm kind of tired of using paper and pencils, I don't want to do it anymore!!! Good luck with that...

Solution:

If you had followed my lecture you would have known there's two ways of practice this task, to learn make documentations. Either Minecraft or Codecademy - your choise! 

Everyone else who had choosen Codecademy learn php (as it says in the task) but this student learn html/css instead. Nope, 18yo and can't read nor listen. But still, he's doing something.

Minecraft in general

To use Minecraft in the classroom really is a challenge and because of two things 

• Youth of today move between games really fast and this autumn CSGO (from 2012) is a much more popular game.
• Teachers have just taken the giant step, from paper and pencil to a game learning enviroment.

Therefor, as the enlighten teacher, you have to make the students understand to accept a boring (?) game and to encourage the teacher to continue try new pedagogy ways.

Math with MinecraftEDU

We, the upper secondary vocational institution where I work, has this fall started to participate in a university study, we have the control groups and Åbo Akademi University (Special Education/Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies) collect the data and will present it in a master's thesis. Because there are no, or very few, studies it will be exciting to see what this leads to.

The purpose of the study is to examine how a game (Minecraft) in education affect students' math skills, interests and anxiety.

As I'm the one teacher with experience of the Minecraft environment I also participate in the classroom. It's a bit of a challenge and slightly exhausting, at the same time as I coach the teacher in the game environment I'm also an extra teacher, for the students, in the classroom.

ComputerCraftEDU

I have one student who helps me with one server I rent. When school started this fall he asked if we should upgrade the server to an higher and newer version but instead I gave him a challenge:

I want a survival PvP server with ComputerCraftEDU and players on the server should not have building rights.

A challenge he took seriously and spent a bit over a weekend to get the server up and running. He had to figure out what ComputerCraftEDU was and how to configure the server settings plus server versions. I believe he read the reddit-thread to figure out how it should work.

When every new player joins the server he/she will get a start kit (a turtle, a remote control, diamond pick-axe, a workbench, 5 apples, 5 torches and an instruction manual). It's working but now he (my admin) tries to figure out how to launch the economy (shops) and ComputerCraft itself as he experienced CCedu be a bit limited.

There's a couple of things we want our vocational students to learn, alpha and omega stuff;

• analyze problems
• information retrieval
• plan
• documenting
• test
• evaluate
• report

With no build rights on a minecraft server, but you have turtles, you surely have to use those skills. 

My admin student have been playing Minecraft for the last four years and he admit he start getting bored of the concept, but he found himself spend hours on this server to figure out how to program the turtles. He acknowledged the work process: to be able to survive on our server you had to use those skills.

If I can confirm the student's skills in the game, in an environment where they are safe, I might have a greater chance of getting them to do the same in the classroom and another subject...!?

Well, you don't know if you don't try, so let us try!

Now, I happened to have an ongoing course where my students will learn to document a project and it's difficult to make them understand the task. They don't see the big picture in the same obvious way that someone with professional experience does.

So obviously I put them on the server so they would understand the whole picture, why every small steps to move forward are important in the process. Moreover, by using ComputerCraftEDU (drag-drop code), we could also simulate a programming project.

I don't know if it's a Finnish mentality that you have to vomit blood before taking a deeper reflection or whatever it is, but of course they did the opposite way of what I tried to explain. Instead of analyze, search at YouTube, plan or document they have jumped right into the game and forgot completely what I wanted them to do.

Tomorrow I have to have them to focus on the quest, the mission, instead of die in forty different ways as they try to program the turtles... And most annoying, there is some great ways to understand what ComputerCraft is, like this YouTube playlist by FunshineX

Pseudocode and the new languages L++ and M++

This fall semester has just started. I kept my plan to use the "I Wonder..."-lesson as some kind of soft start and I've had one class two days struggle with pseudocode. It was harder than they thought. Much harder!

My plan was to have them blindly do a simple task and afterwards reveal the big secret: what they actually practiced and learned.

I understood 

during the first sub-task (the building phase) when they looked at me as question marks I have to make them understand what is going on. All has now built houses, either in Minecraft or my old architect-LEGO. 

This is something useful to know, understand and learn. Besides, if this construct code is too hard you might should have a second thought about your education. Pseudocode is still much easier to write than "real" code.

But I had to enlighten my students the purpose of the task so they could put their souls into the task. LEGO when you're adult? 17-21 years old? Are you nuts??

Their challenge?

Break something easy (but still a final product) into small steps of actions that someone who doesn't have any background knowledge both can understand as execute. Harder than it seems, that's for sure!

To make it even more difficult, another group of students (practical nurses) has also a course on disability. These practical nurses students, have  often difficults to put into that role not to understand everyday instructions. These students will debug the Business Information Technican students pseudocode (written instructions).

Coding is basically a step-by-step guide for computer to accomplish a task. Now the computer will be a human being, another student with some knowledge of Lego and most certain no knowledge of computers or videogames. Worst of all, it will most certain be a pretty girl... Our own version beauty and the geek haha!

Some of the example (pseudo)code which we've been doing together look like this:

M++ (Minecraft OOP)

L++ (Lego OOP)

What kind of learning takes place?

• Pseudocode
• Understanding of object-oriented programming
• Documentation
• ICT Helpdesk

As it gives so much learning I will continue with my other classes (all Datanom / Datanomi / Business Information Technican students) and do the same concept as I start to believe it's a useful exercise.

I wonder...

Today I got the very exciting news with zero foresight. For some months I will be a replacement teacher for my colleague (a dad!) who will be on paternity leave. But unfortunately, foresight and planning could have been better. On Thursday, I will launch two courses on the topic "Implementation of a prototype for the software" where students will understand the point of planning and documenting projects. 

We will for example be using UML (the Unified Modeling Language), Gantt charts and Entity Relationship Models. Also flowcharts and pseudocode as it will help our students both in this course as when they start with object oriented programming.

I WONDER...

...what if I have them start in a completely different end...!?

What if I make them build something with LEGO (or Minecraft), have them to documenting their creations with camera, hand in that first task. And what if I make them to write an instruction how to build their creation? And that instruction needs to be detail in absurdity.

OKAY, MY PURPOSE?

A LEGO creation (rather than Minecraft) would be something easy to build but advanced enough to write an instruction to, targetting group someone who has never built LEGO (or played Minecraft) before. The build phase itself is something you repeat or loop, will they figure that out?

So my students, who are they? Well, vocational students between 16-19 years old, all gamers. I need to catch their interest in a very odd way I guess, this could be it. They will all be programmers so they need to start think OOP way and I believe one important skill for coding is to break a series of actions into small steps that someone who doesn't have any background knowledge (like a computer) can both understand and execute. 

Coding is basically a step-by-step guide for computer to accomplish a task and to write a LEGO instruction of their creation might be harder than you think. And we could ask other students at our school to perform the task strictly following the instructions and I'm pretty sure there will be lots of steps missed. 

AFTERWARDS

...and only afterwards I reveal what they have practiced.

• Pseudocode
• Object oriented programming
• Documentation

They will also have an own example what to later do a flowchart or UML of. 

Am I nuts? 

:)

Learning with WonderQuest

The other day AquaVera got an old decommissioned iPad from her uncle, the tool can not be upgraded from iOS 5 so it was useless for him. But since Vera belongs to the YouTube generation, it doesn't matter as long as a browser works. When I look in my YouTube history (where she use to watch from) there's a lot of crap that I even don't know how she finds (as she can't write), but still look at.

So with this "new" iPad I could make a shortcut to the YouTube in the browser (safari) so she always starts from Stampys new show "WonderQuest". Adam Clarke told me the exciting news he would be a part of it half a year ago, at a time when I was stupid enough to not understand his excitement! I had missed the Stampy phenomenon! Stupid, but at least I had repaired it now :)

Anyway, AquaVera as many of her friends, has already two languages to learn as we live in Finland: the majority language is Finnish and Swedish is the minority language. As her mum is Finnish and I'm Swedish, she already speaks two languages. But keep in mind: that's nothing unusual in Finland, even if the Finnish themselves don't always count it as a qualification.

Thanks to the TV-channel NickJr and Dora The Explorer she has already learned some English. When we moved to this new neighborhood there was a family where the father is from Scotland, the children are also two speakers: but Finnish and English instead.

Combine those facts: 

Dora the Explorer, WonderQuest and English speaken friends and you will only have one answer - she now talks three languages... She has learned a lot during this summer (not only swim, bike and so on).

This morning we talked about learning as she has been watching WonderQuest over and over. She had loads of questions, both of gaming and learning. Why a quest line? Why do you need a mission? Why challenges and puzzles?

Learning.

Different ways of learning.

And we agreed, learning is - or can be - fun. 

And when it's fun it's most often multplayer.

Two weeks ago AquaVera played Disney Universe, a co-op pvp action video game, with her second cousin W. 

They practiced collaboration and later took this new skill try to steer and navigate our boat (they took turns), not bad for two 7 year old children.

Again, all you (as a parent or teacher) have to do is show interest (you don't have to master the subject) and tie all together, enlighten the learning, get them to reflect (talk, discuss, write, chatt).

Learning is not any longer one subject at a time (the analog way, teachers and school), it's multi-learning (the digital way, our children and pupils).

WonderQuest is a shining example of multi-Learning, even without having English as native language! Why? The enviroment is safe, they have been (and can go) there themselves and afterwards you can download the map and experience the last episode (press buttons, solve puzzles) and learn more. 

The show also follow the USA common core of grade 2 in the curriculum and according to Wizard Keen they aim to create an engaging story driven content multi-Learning enviroment (science, math, literature etc). 

And the makers reach a bonus learning that are so obvious that they don't think about it: language. 

English for non-English speakers. 

And just as important: courage. 

"Dad, call Wizard Keen and see if he wants to play Minecraft with me, English won't be a problem!" 

(AquaVera 7yo)

Suggestion to the makers: 

Make exercise books inside Minecraft that you could get access to after downloading the map, could be keywords (vocabulary) from the current episode.

This way of teaching is definitely on the fourth stage of the SAMR model. Tech has made the impossible possible, you can walk inside the exercise book and experience the learning in a 3D way.

Best of all: 

As a remedial teacher (vocational institution) I can use the small "I WONDER" episodes myself when I try to explain the basic stuff for my weaker students. Most often they rather learn from YouTube instead of a book. One of the frequent missing knowledge is measurements, metre, decimetre and centimetre. I believe I will have good use of this episode the upcoming fall