Minecraft Worksheets

So, I have been pondering something for a while and something came up today on social media that really brought some clarification to some thoughts for me, but also muddied the waters a bit on some ideas I had been working on. Here goes!

I have been pondering about 'recreating/remaking/tweaking' some very old 'joke problem solving' sheets from an old 8 Plus book, printed in 1986, that I used to use in my math classes for some "fun" practice/reinforcement of particular concepts. These sheets had a joke or riddle as the overarching question, multiple reinforcing problems for the students to find the answers to, and those answers were related to a letter, and when combined all together you came out with the answer to the riddle.

It has been stewing the back of my mind for quite some time, and I revisited it just the other day, mostly because I finally remembered where the book was, looking at some of the sheets in the book, and seeing if I could apply the 'concepts' to Minecraft, and how I could get the kids 'practicing' these concepts in the virtual world.

My original (a few years ago) plan was to recreate the worksheet almost as is, in Minecraft, but give them the virtual world to practice the problem with. Then I thought about copyright issues and such and thought it might be better to make the questions literally about Minecraft, and to get the students to actively create the solution in world, and then decode the answer to the problem. Then today, my eyes fell upon this;

It really, really made me think. I think I must have been borderline crazy to think about putting worksheets in Minecraft that have no relevance to the Minecraft world. Like the problem above, it is a great problem, and I can see exactly the learning demonstrated by students as they answer the question, but it has absolutely no relevance to the Minecraft world... There is no cheese, or mice in Minecraft. 

While I have no idea about how the students worked within Minecraft to complete this activity, I feel like this question could have been reworded to be more suitable to the medium. For example; 

"A rectangular structure of dirt, with a base area of 24 blocks and a height of 4 blocks was left out for a few nights, and some Endermen stole some blocks. After a few nights, there was a 4 block square base and height of only 1 block left. How many blocks did the Endermen steal?"

Does this rewording change the math? Possibly a little, but if you really wanted them working with 'standard' units, you could easily say that each block was a cm cube or such, but the actual concept itself, I don't think it does. So... that leads to yet another question, is my question 'better' than the one pictured? I honestly don't think it is, however it is definitely more 'relevant' to the platform students are learning in. Does that make it better inherently? I honestly don't know.

The more I reflect on this, and write this post, the more 'lost' I become. That question (and many more like it) have likely been on worksheets handed to students for more years than I have been a teacher. Second to that, since that is clearly in Information Block from the old MinecraftEdu which hasn't been 'available' for purchase for quite a few years now, it has probably been used quite a few times in that context too. The question would have no relevance to me at any time, because mice are not really a problem here where I live, and I never grew up with mice eating any of my food, particularly considering we kept our cheese in the fridge.

So, with multiple students having answered this question on paper and many others just like it, over the last however many years, who are likely no worse off for doing so, why do I think that making it relevant to the platform, when using Minecraft is so important? What has made that question feel so out of place for me within this context, and more so than in the context of a worksheet?

I think it is most likely because I don't want teachers to make Minecraft boring, or just drill and kill like activities because it is a massive missed opportunity. Minecraft is a game, if teachers are going to consistently make it 'just a worksheet' then, I am pretty sure I have said this in a previous post, we are going to lose the opportunity to keep engaging students in a new and much more fun type of learning. 

I don't want to rehash all the same discussion from a previous post, so I am going to leave this thought right here, and will now go and re-think, yet again, my idea of getting problem solving activities, where students can actively build, interact, and solve mathematical problems into Minecraft in a fun way, using the actual game to help reinforce the concepts. 

As always, thanks for reading, and if you would like to leave a comment below, please do. Otherwise, if you would like to have conversations like this in 'real time' join the Minecraft Mentor Discord here: https://discord.gg/7fSQBdx or, if you would like to become a Minecraft Mentor yourself, all the details on how to join and be a part of that community can be found here: http://aka.ms/joinmee