Is Minecraft the Ultimate Educational Tool? | Idea Channel | PBS youtube.com/watch?v=RI0BN5… #edidgbl

— Hamish Macleod (@hamacleod) March 11, 2013

My son Thomas (9) is an avid minecraft fan, he plays it on xbox, computer and ipod touch, he connects with friends and neighbours on it and plays for hours on it. He has encouraged his sister Alice (7) to play by playing on her creative side and staying in creative mode with her.

He has created his own world with her and with his next door neighbour, they have their own community with their own houses and their own adventure parks, slides, rollercoasters, Parkour playgrounds.

I actually love seeing them playing together on this game, there is so much co-operation and negotiation and support going on between them, they talk creatively and imaginatively continuously through play. They focus together on a shared activity without fighting for much longer periods of time than in real life games – infact they played real life minecraft by creating their own outfits and weapons and then went survival but soon both began arguing and complaining.

I am beginning to think about how I could use game based communities for my essay

This new technology is allowing rats to develop an online relationship at a distance – a community of two – it’s a start! “rats can share, and act on, each other’s sensory information by electrically connecting their brains via tiny grids of electrodes that reach into the motor cortex, the brain region that processes movement.”

The scientists studying the rats acknowledge that communities work together and create a greater knowledge and understanding. “In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.”

The brains are talking to one another and the rat knew which lever to press without going through the learning process. It is gaining knowledge but is it actually learning without going through the process and without letting the rats own life experiences impact upon the knowledge. This is similar to the concept of the meme in that an knowledge is passed on and imitated or replicated without having to learn it first?

I think I must stop there as I hate rats and I can’t imagine them having a theory of mind.

But if this happened in humans………………..

Click here to view the embedded video.

I love the idea of people coming together to perform creative pieces in public places for the entertainment of others.

I love that it is for a brief moment in time – appears and disappears

I think it is representative of the fleeting nature of current popular culture, ephemeral, fast moving, creative and the bringing together of minds.