As technology offers students more access to the digital world, teachers have to start thinking outside the box on how to prepare their students for the future.
King High School teacher Katherine Hewett is doing just that, but using an unorthodox but futuristic method.
“I use the game Minecraft to teach my students about 21st century skills,” she said.
That's right, Hewett is using video games in the classroom, and it's not as crazy as some may think.
“About five years ago, I was having conversations with my students about video games,” said Hewett, who is a career and technical education teacher at King. “I was listening to them tell me about how video games impacted their learning and as a teacher, this was an awakening. I realized kids were receiving an alternate education when they got home.”
Hewett said she started to ask herself questions about who was teaching and mentoring these students when they entered these virtual worlds.
“I was wondering why weren't adults, teachers, not taking more of an interest and using this is as a tool?” She said.” Why weren't they in those worlds with them?”
That was when Hewett decided she was going to integrate to virtual reality.
Her goal? To teach the students design, coding, programming and visual media so that they are prepared for the future.
And Minecraft came on to the market, Hewett knew she had a chance to make this dream a reality.
“Here was a VR space that visually looks like Legos and had sandbox features to build, create and design 3-D worlds,” she said. “I approached the administration about it and when I suggested it to them, they were all in! I remember, when we ordered the licenses they told us we were 1 in 700 in the country that integrated the game into a class.”
Since Hewett started the course in 2013, she has had students find careers in the information technology field working for big data companies or working on virtual reality projects of their own.
Hewett said the class starts with a theme topic.
“Each class agrees on a topic where they then start researching and begin replicating the build in Minecraft,” she said. “Students collaborate and communicate to create a really large size 3-D model.”
This year's classes have different worlds as the game is integrated into all of Hewett's classes. Some class periods are designing fantasy worlds like Mario World and Tron whereas others are replicating real life places like Alcatraz Prison and the Winchester Mansion.
Sophomore Brendan Fuller said taking the animated course will open doors for him in the future.
“I've always been great with technology, but taking this course has definitely taught me a thing or two about animation,” Fuller said. “I want to use these skills one day when I become an architectural engineer. Learning how to create 3-D models now will benefit me greatly.”
Hewett said “Minecraft” has not just changed her students lives but hers as well.
The King High School teacher said as she was working on her doctorate, she focused her dissertation on her class. Now, her research on the “21st Century Classroom Gamer” has been accepted into the international journal “Games and Culture.”
“This course is everything,” she said. “I've learned so much with my students immersing myself into this gaming culture.”
Hewett said the animation course is a first step. She plans to take the next step with virtual reality soon.
“We don't know what the jobs will be in the next five to 10 years,” she said. “So I'm trying to teach them all the 21st century skills they need to prepare them for jobs that don't even exist yet.”
While we’re not shy in admitting to never going big on Minecraft, a game that has such a huge following but one that just didn’t grab us, the idea of merging Dragon Quest with some building mechanics piqued our interest when it first launched back in 2016
Some years later and with the launch of Nintendo’s Switch, what better platform to port this RPG-Builder to and explore it for the first time. Especially as Dragon Quest is one JRPG that holds a bright candle in our hearts.
Set after the events of the original Dragon Quest, Builders takes us through an alternate timeline in the long since destroyed Alefgard in which the few left no longer have the ability to build or create.
A simple enough premise giving you enough of a jumping off point to begin your immersion into the world but one which requires essentially no prior knowledge of the previous entries to understand or even fall in love with the games style, enemies and overall shot of nostalgia with its classic Zelda feels.
After a fairly thorough tutorial, giving you all the know how you need to get building, from full on structures to surviving in the harsh wilderness of Alefgard (hot tip, don’t stray too far from a light source when the night falls) Dragon Quest Builders takes the training wheels off and leaves you to build as you see fit.
Dragon Quest Builders Screenshots
In DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS, players are tasked to construct a wide variety of structures as they receive ever-more extravagant requests from expectant citizens eager to find a new home. Explore with the freedom of sandbox gameplay, combined with an immersive and charming DRAGON QUEST story – battling with iconic DRAGON QUEST monsters and interacting with gorgeously designed 3D characters along the way.
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Thankfully building is simple enough to understand but expansive enough for you to let your imagination run away with you, creating towns of your own.
It’s a hugely satisfying experience, especially when your creations can be built, upgraded and even taken down again with simple commands that feel natural to control.
There are story-based mission of course, as towns folk will need a hand from time to time building anything from simple bedrooms to bathhouses and even wandering the more dangerous parts of the world in search of precious materials and possible new towns-folk.
Simplicity is at the games core though as combat is just as easy to adopt as the main building mechanic, opting for a classic Zelda-esque real-time combat system which is much pacier than the series turn based combat and fits extremely well with the over feel of this iteration.
And while the world here may seem a little different for experienced Dragon Quest fans there are plenty of familiar monsters to deal with; from metal-slime to golems, which appear the further, you delve into the wilderness. Each dropping crucial building materials.
Exploring while treacherous is seldom a waste of time, as all areas of the world from it’s deserts to it’s forests have plenty of secrets to distract you and give you yet another reason to stray from your quest and sink some more time into.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect we found, however, was the many sieges you’ll encounter once you’ve progressed a little further into your adventure.
As an array of the games nasty’s tear towards all four walls of your towns, you’ll need to prepare barriers and automated defences to survive the onslaught.
These miniaturised tower defence moments are fun and challenging without entering into hair pulling territory.
When you factor in the games free build mode, allowing you to simply create to your hearts content minus the enemy onslaughts and limited supplies, then it shows how
Dragon Quest Builders is a big game disguised in a simple package, and one that fits perfectly with the Switch.
We found ourselves constantly dipping in and out on train journeys before docking at home for longer sessions, delightfully hooked on the games world and that niggling need to spend 5 more minutes building the next addition to our towns.
Whether you’re new to Dragon Quest or this style of creation based game, you’re sure to be fully enthralled.
THE VERDICT – 4/5
THE GOOD • Simple but addictive building system • Great soundtrack • Familiar Monsters • Nostalgic feel and aesthetic
Though Philadelphia resident Gabe Young doesn’t have enough hours in the day to explain all of the twists and turns players of the video game Minecraft can take, this weekend he and a team of gaming enthusiasts will attempt to share what makes the game truly unique with Peninsula residents.
With opportunities to experience the game in virtual reality, live entertainment on four stages and several young gamers sharing tips and tricks with fans of the game, Minefaire, the event Young is coordinating at the San Mateo County Event Center this Saturday and Sunday, is set to immerse players of all ages and ability levels in a game that’s captivated the minds of many.
By gathering resources and building structures like staircases, mazes and amusement parks in the game, Minecraft players can create their own worlds and solve problems in creative ways, said Young. In giving players the option to work with or compete against others and code within the game to create maps of new worlds, Minecraft offers players a seemingly boundless environment to explore, said Young.
“Basically there’s no limit to what you can do with Minecraft,” he said. “Your only limitation is your imagination.”
And perhaps that’s why so many kids have been drawn to the game since it was released in 2011, drawing anywhere between 10,000 to 15,000 people to the five Minefaires Young and event cofounder Chad Collins have pulled off since they started convening enthusiasts in 2016.
Young said he enjoys seeing players, many of whom are accustomed to playing on their own, come alive when they meet others as bullish on the game as they are. Though the events are aimed at attracting all ages, Young said kids ages 6 to 12 have come to enjoy meeting peers and discovering new ways to approach the game. Getting the chance to meet other youth who have made a name for themselves on YouTube as experts in the game is as exciting as it’s been for generations of kids to meet star athletes and celebrities, said Young.
“These kids they see these YouTubers as their A listers in a way that we can’t imagine,” he said. “It gives a lot of these kids the motivation and the energy to keep going.”
Though Young and Collins have experience convening kids at events like a Lego convention, Young said it wasn’t until they saw their own children playing the game that they saw how captivating it was and decided to focus their energy in planning Minecraft events.
“We were blown away with how much we’re learning by watching [them] learn,” he said. “There’s a lot of things happening in these little brains.”
A go-to activity for his four kids before dinner, Young said he’s realized how much the game is teaching them about topics like agriculture, history, geology and architecture, all without their feeling like they are being taught. And he’s hoping the same understanding spreads among parents in the 11 cities expected to play host to Minefaire this year.
Young’s advice to other parents attending the event with their kids is to be open to experiences they might not have had as kids and let them teach them about a game they’ve spent hours exploring.
“These kids are going to grab their parents by the hand and say look what I’m doing,” he said. “Now they’re going to have a better idea of how to guide their kids.”
Minefaire will be held 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 10 and 11 at the San Mateo County Event Center, 1346 Saratoga Drive. Visit minefaire.com for more information and to purchase tickets, which start at $45 and are free for children age 2 and under.
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Jeremy Smith wanted to talk about Jesus, so he picked up a shovel and headed out to build a tunnel.
A virtual shovel, that is. As both a Christian and a fan of the video game Minecraft, Smith has one foot in two different communities coming into contact more frequently in the fuzzy halls of cyberspace.
And, as a senior writer at the online ministry ChurchMag, Smith uses each of these communities to serve the other. He “vlogs” — creates online videos of himself playing Minecraft — while simultaneously explaining Christian ideology in a series titled “Minecraft Theology.”
“I wanted to look at some of the more basic stuff, some of the core competencies of Christianity,” he said in one of these videos as his Minecraft icon sped across a screen full of the chunky landscape Minecraft allows users to create and navigate via a computer mouse.
“Part of the prayer process is admitting that you’ve sinned. If you are of the mindset that you are perfect, then you should probably just go ahead and turn this episode off because I got nothing for you,” he continued. “We have confession when we say ‘yes’ to Jesus and become saved.”
In the realm of video games, the 149 views Smith’s video has logged may be far from viral, but Minecraft is becoming what some video game makers hoped Christian-themed games like Catechumen and Adam’s Venture that failed to sell well would become — a tool for exploring and advancing religion among gamers.
Ithaca College professor Rachel Wagner sees the use of video games like Minecraft as part of what she calls the “gamification” not only of religion, but of the world. She says religions and video games have several things in common — rules, rituals, and a bend toward order and structure.
“Even if they are ‘open’ in the sense of allowing players to construct entire worlds for themselves, as Minecraft does, games always offer spaces in which things make sense, where players have purpose and control,” she said. “For players who may feel that the real world is spinning out of control, games can offer a comforting sense of predictability. They can replace God for some in their ability to promise an ordered world.”
Minecraft is what techie types call a “sandbox” game: It has few rules, so players can dig in anywhere and build what they like. They build with virtual bricks — think digitized Legos — to create bulky buildings, plants, people, anything, in mostly primary colors.
There are Minecraft versions where players try to survive or go on adventures of their own devising. And there are versions where people — sometimes children, sometimes adults like Smith — construct homes, buildings, bridges, churches and other houses of worship.
Some Minecraft users even “build” their own religious icons. Using blocky “skins” — Minecraft lingo for a character — they create Jesuses, popes, priests, rabbis, angels, and more to populate Minecraft worlds everywhere.
But while Minecraft can be used by players of every religion, it seems to be most popular among Christians. Gonzalez, who catalogs religious video games at religiousgames.org, estimates there are about 1,500 religion-themed video games, of which two-thirds are Christian.
Certainly, not all Minecraft players use religious skins or the churches and other houses of worship they build for some spiritual purpose or for proselytizing. But how they use them is hard to pin down.
“No one’s pastor is telling them the best way to minister to people is to pretend to be Jesus in a Minecraft world,” Gonzalez said. “So the question of why people want to dress up as Jesus and go around in Minecraft is hard to say.”
Still, Minecraft and other computer and video games have become so closely aligned with religion in some circles that the American Academy of Religion created a scholars’ group dedicated to its study four years ago.
“For most people, their virtual lives are an extension of their real lives,” said Gregory Grieve, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who has studied the two decades religious people have engaged in video games. “Among Christians it was a place for proselytizing and a place for meeting people they would not otherwise meet. People who are religious just see these games as an extension of their religious practice.”
Some build houses of worship — YouTube is rife with virtual tours of churches, cathedrals, synagogues, and mosques, both real and imaginary. Some build Noah’s Ark or Solomon’s Temple or their own versions of Jerusalem and other “Bible lands.”
Others users create faith-based Minecraft “servers” — private virtual enclaves where members agree to certain rules (no swearing is a common one) and play the game in a form of religious fellowship.
These groups recently became a meme — or joke spread rapidly among internet users — in which users sardonically responded to foul language by uttering different versions of: “Sorry sir, this is a Christian server. No swearing allowed!”
But Eric Dye, editor of ChurchMag, says its Christian-oriented Minecraft server is merely a reflection of how its users see, or want to see, the real world.
“We can build things in it, like themed cities, and there is actually a church,” he said. “It is not like we have church services or anything but it seemed something fun to have. It seemed fitting. That is why you see religion manifested in Minecraft — it is just an extension of people’s interests in what they create.”
Chad Sapieha and his little reviewer-in-training came away with slightly different takes on Square Enix's blocky crafting RPG
Dragon Quest Builders looks and feels a lot like Minecraft, but adds ingredients missing from Microsoft's popular crafting game, including a story, missions, and plenty of guidance.Square EnixI’ve long thought it fascinating that Minecraft, one of the most popular and financially successful games of this – or any – era, hasn’t spawned more clones or direct competition. Square Enix recognized this market gap back in 2016 and tried to fill it with Dragon Quest Builders, a game that combines the Japanese company’s expertise in role-playing with key elements – mining, crafting, and freeform building – liberally borrowed from Microsoft’s powerhouse kids property.The most interesting thing about Dragon Quest Builders isn’t what it takes from Minecraft but instead how it fills in some of the gaps that have existed since that game’s inception. Namely, storytelling, quests, and building guidance. As you explore the world you meet characters who provide lore, you’ll embark on objective-driven missions, and you’ll eventually build items and structures according to specific blueprints. As in Minecraft, you can still build whatever you like wherever you like, but the blueprints help move the story along and provide ideas for things you might want to build on your own.
These are all features I’ve long wished for in Minecraft. And seeing them implemented within the familiar world of Dragon Quest – a long-running series of Japanese role-playing games that I’ve played for decades – was a joy for me when I played the game on PlayStation 4. But it seemed like I wasn’t in the majority. The game had sold a little over a million copies worldwide, last I heard. That’s not terrible, but it’s just a tiny fraction of the more than 130 million copies of Minecraft that have been purchased by kids around the world.
Still, I thought maybe people just hadn’t given it a chance. So I let my 12-year-old kid – a long-time Minecraft devotee and lover of role-playing games – loose with the soon-to-be-released Nintendo Switch edition of Dragon Quest Builders thinking it was bound to become her new obsession. Turns out she’d rather be free to follow her imagination than locked into linear story and told what to do.
Here’s a transcript of the discussion we had after she’d been playing for a few days. It will serve as our review.
Me: I thought you’d have a great time with Dragon Quest Builders. It basically combines the mining, crafting, and building parts of Minecraft with a colourful Japanese RPG – one of your favourite kinds of games. What did you think of it?
Kid: Honestly, it isn’t my favourite. For a few reasons. At the start the problem was mostly controls. I just didn’t like how they were set up. That’s something I can eventually grow used to, but I also didn’t like how you couldn’t explore the whole world right from the start. The story kind of limits you to a specific area – an island – because of some “unseen force.” There are also some things about the inventory that I didn’t like. I had to go back to my chest to store stuff all the time. It’s definitely not an awful game, but it’s not my new favourite.
Interesting. The control problem you mentioned happens to me all the time. Having played games for decades, I expect certain types of games to have specific button schemes. When a developer tries something new – like, say, uses the top action button to jump rather than the bottom one – it can be frustrating. At least until I get used to them.
I’ve kind of grown used to the controls now, but I still get frustrated. This game uses the A-button to get to the menu, which makes no sense to me because it’s your primary button. I’m always pressing it thinking it should do something else. Or at least I was at the start. It’s gotten a little better.
Fair enough. Personally, I have to say that I like Dragon Quest Builders a bit more than Minecraft, mostly just because it has a story and objectives. Minecraft is great when it comes to creative freedom, but I can only build towers and castles for so long until I get kind of bored. It might just be a lack of imagination on my part, but I like to have missions and objectives. Dragon Quest Builders gives us that.
Well, I’d like it more if I could at least leave the island and do whatever I wanted to do. That way I’d have the choice. I could either do the story stuff, or I could go off and just do whatever I wanted to. Find more resources to build stuff. I guess I kind of get why they can’t let you do that – it’d be hard for the designers to tell a story that makes sense if you could go places you weren’t supposed to see until later on – but it’s what I want. Minecraft might not have a story, but I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. I think that’s more important to me.
I get you. And I’m the first to admit that the story in Dragon Quest Builders isn’t anything special. Standard fantasy stuff involving monsters and world saving. But it provides a reason and context for everything you do, which I like. I also like how we get blueprints for building certain buildings and objects. They provide a starting place and a seeding ground for ideas – kind of like a Lego kit with an instruction booklet. Afterward you can go crazy building anything you like, but that initial guidance is nice.
Yeah I really liked the blueprints, too. I thought it was a cool spin. Even in the Lego games you don’t really get blueprints you can build piece by piece, not even in Lego World where you’re free to build anything. I think that’s one of the best parts of Dragon Quest Builders. Something other people who make games like this might want to copy.
Another thing I liked was how this game handles crafting. Once you have what you need for a complex object, you can just build it, instantly. That’s smart. When it comes to crafting, how and where in the world you choose to place what you’ve made is the fun part, not sorting through your inventory to pick out all the pieces you need.
Yeah, the designing is definitely the fun part. But, in Minecraft‘s defence, in newer versions you can go into the settings and change it so that you don’t have to manually go through your inventory to make stuff like beds and doors.
How about the look and feel? I’d be lying if I said Minecraft‘s retro pixelated aesthetic hasn’t worn a little thin with me. Dragon Quest Builders keeps the blocky vibe, but adds more vibrancy and detail. It just feels like it has more character.
Yeah. I do like how it looks more than Minecraft. There are little details, like bits of grass on blocks, that make things a bit more realistic. And I like that the characters in this game are like little cartoon characters with more personality. Maybe it’s just because of how much I’ve played Minecraft, but sometimes it gives me a headache. I’ll go to sleep at night and close my eyes and just see its blocky graphics.
Does Dragon Quest Builders make you want to try other Dragon Quest games? Part of the reason for creative spinoffs like this is to get new people interested in the core series. Other Dragon Quests aren’t really like this one – they’re much more traditional JRPGs – but they contain similar elements, like monster types and the style of dialogue.
It makes me interested in them. But I don’t know if I ever would. I love role-playing games, but they take so much time. I think I’ve got too many to play already. And aren’t there, like, a dozen of them? That’s, like, hundreds and hundreds of hours. I could never catch up.
Good point. Final verdict?
I think you know I’m pretty generous with ratings, so keep that in mind. I think I’d probably give it like a seven or seven-and-a-half out of ten. The idea is really good, and the animation is cute, and even the story isn’t half bad – and you can kind of skip it if you don’t like it – but something about it just doesn’t really click for me the way it does in some of my favourite games. I’ll probably keep playing when I get tired of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or if I’m not online and can’t play Splatoon2, but there are other games I’d rather play.
I like to think I’m not quite as generous as you are with scores, but I’d give it a seven-and-a-half or even an eight. I actually think older players will like it more than kids, both because of the name – there are lots of grown-ups out there who grew up with Dragon Quest – and the guided elements. Problem is, it’s clearly targeted at kids, who, like you, might want a little more freedom and fewer limitations. I guess it’s a good little game that’s maybe stuck between audiences.
It’s true old people have no imagination. Every time you play Minecraft you just build big ugly towers into the sky made of random things and then jump off them into the water. Then you stop playing. And when we play Lego you’re just like Will Farrell in The Lego Movie, except you don’t have his hair or teeth. You just stick to the instructions and leave stuff built until it gets dusty. So, yeah, Dragon Quest Builders is probably about your speed.
Me: I thought you’d have a great time with Dragon Quest Builders. It basically combines the mining, crafting, and building parts of Minecraft with a colourful Japanese RPG – one of your favourite kinds of games. What did you think of it?
Fair enough. Personally, I have to say that I like Dragon Quest Builders a bit more than Minecraft, mostly just because it has a story and objectives. Minecraft is great when it comes to creative freedom, but I can only build towers and castles for so long until I get kind of bored. It might just be a lack of imagination on my part, but I like to have missions and objectives. Dragon Quest Builders gives us that.
Another thing I liked was how this game handles crafting. Once you have what you need for a complex object, you can just build it, instantly. That’s smart. When it comes to crafting, how and where in the world you choose to place what you’ve made is the fun part, not sorting through your inventory to pick out all the pieces you need.
Good point. Final verdict?