Maker culture and Minecraft: implications for the future of learning

DIY Learning is something we discuss here a lot. That involves creating the circumstances that activate latent learning capabilities. Games allow immersion in an environment that usually demands the user adapt and act in inventive ways as well as invoke critical thinking.

But they can sometimes also require the user to create their environment, which is even more DIY, and even more evocative of latent learning capabilities.

It turns out we all tend to get excited when we have a chance to do and make things, at least partly, ourselves. As the learning pyramid explains, those who are teaching what they learn, while they learn it, have the best retention of all. Kind of hard to space out in the back of the room when it’s your turn to drive the virtual spaceship to Mars.

Then there’s “make culture” according to Wikipedia

The maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture…

 

…that intersects with hacker culture (which is less concerned with physical objects as it focuses on software) and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones.

Here’s more on the intersection of “Maker Culture and the future of learning” from: