Greggy, 9
Media Consumption: 5 hours a day
Favorite Media/Technology: iPad to play Minecraft and Roblox
How do you and your family interact with media/technology?
I don’t really use technology with my family. The most we do together with technology is watch movies on our TV.
How do you and your peers interact with media/technology?
My friends and I go on Minecraft together and try to get onto the higher levels. We talk about the different things we had to do to get to those levels and how to get the most amount of points. We also send each other TikToks about things we think are funny.
What do you use media for?
I use it to play games with my friends and talk with them when we’re not at school.
What is your favorite/least favorite thing about media/technology?
My favorite is that I get to play Minecraft with my friends and my least favorite thing is that my mom always takes away the iPad if I haven’t finished my homework.
What is one thing you want the people who create the media you like to watch/play/to interact with to know?
They need to add different features to Minecraft because it’s starting to get a little boring. My friends and I are thinking about switching over to Fortnite.
What media are you using more now because of the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’m using my mom’s computer more. Before COVID, I didn’t use an actual computer that much, I only used iPads. I’m going on Google more to look up information for school, and not just playing games.
Where do you get most of your information to learn more about changes during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., news, internet, parents, etc.)?
I get most of my information from TikTok. On my For You Page (FYP), I get TikToks about mostly Minecraft or funny videos, but sometimes I’ll get news about COVID.
What media has been helping you stay busy/stay calm during the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’ve been on YouTube a lot watching my favorite gamers. Their channels are teaching me how to level up in Minecraft.
What lessons have you learned from the COVID-19 pandemic?
I haven’t learned much from the COVID pandemic, other than we can do almost everything at home. It’s nice that I get to see my friends at school, but I liked it when I could do my classwork through Zoom.
Have you learned anything about how you use media and technology because of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Not really. I just learned how to use different apps, such as Zoom. Nothing really changed with how I use my iPad.
Interviewed by: Kaitlyn Bigman, UCLA Student
Mining 21st-Century Skills at Home with Technology
This article is part of our #LearningAtHome2020 series with the Child & Family Blog and BOLD
Just one year ago, the phrase “learning at home” may have conjured different images for parents and educators, unless home-schooling was already the norm. Families the world over have experienced disruptions to daily life and the challenges of distance learning brought on by the pandemic. Teachers with a reluctance for technology in the classroom have had to make an abrupt shift to reach their students. Parents who have chosen to limit their children’s time with digital devices have been challenged by the inevitable increase in screen time as education went virtual. The line between work and home life has blurred, just as the line between screen time and simply, time, is ever-blurring.
I’m sure your family could use a break from the math or literacy talk, so I’m going to give you some ideas on how you can encourage your children’s development of 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, communication, and creativity through digital play. This is not nearly as daunting a task as it seems. After all, parents and caregivers are children’s first educators and the home environment is their first classroom. Children learn, develop, and make sense of their world through play. But just as screen time and “time” are increasingly intertwined, our use of digital media as tools for learning needs to evolve. We need to literally think outside the TV or touchscreen box and not be constrained by it.
An example of a playful, open-ended digital world is the video game, Minecraft. In Minecraft, the sky is the limit--within this world, players are bound by their own imaginations. For this reason, Minecraft presents many opportunities to foster a number of 21st-century skills.
The 4 Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking
Video games abound with opportunities for social connection and collaboration. Collaboration involves two or more people in a shared effort to learn or solve a problem together. Susan Danby and colleagues provided detailed accounts of children helping each other succeed in various digital environments, and in various regions of the world (Norway, Sweden, and Australia). They provided an example of Australian siblings, ages 4 and 7 years old, traversing a shared digital world (Minecraft) as they acquired resources and combatted zombies. Even though the two children were on their own devices, they engaged in play that demonstrated communication patterns indicative of collaboration and instruction. Children who play games together learn perspective-taking and must consider each others’ shared knowledge.
While the potential to learn and develop 21st-century skills in massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) such as Minecraft exists, transferring these skills to the real-world is less straightforward. When I was the lab manager at the Swinburne Babylab in Australia, I remember entertaining a sibling of one of our research participants. I say “entertaining,” but in reality, I provided him with scrap paper and colored pencils and his imagination took care of the rest. I was so impressed as he explained that he was drawing and planning a building that he would later construct in Minecraft. This is just one example of how the digital world and the physical world can connect to encourage the transfer of skills, such as creativity.
In addition to creativity, researchers have also found that playing Minecraft encourages critical thinking and problem-solving; students who used Minecraft to accomplish various tasks commented on how the game-design forced them to think outside the box. This innovative and creative approach to problem-solving was also shown in a group of 13 year-olds who completed an 8-week workshop in which they were asked to create and explain their products in Minecraft. After the workshop, students’ scores on a test of creativity improved, and their teacher also observed improvements in the students’ creativity. Not only does Minecraft enable the user to have creative freedom, but it can also encourage players to seek information from outside resources, such as reading content on forums or watching or creating Youtube tutorials, etc. This multimodal literacy is referred to as metagaming.
Actionable Insights
Content creators can provide learning opportunities for children by:
Creating open-ended environments that lack an explicit goal, “freedom of play”
Providing opportunities to help characters. Prosocial content promotes prosocial behaviors such as helping and empathy.
Having more tools to choose from to encourage greater creativity in problem-solving.
Providing opportunities to interact with and explore the environment.
Encouraging replayability by making sure the game experience isn’t linear or the same every time.
Content creators can help parents create learning opportunities for their children by:
Providing a curriculum with suggestions on how to take the digital content to the real world and practice specific skills, depending on the goal.
e.g., plan a garden in Minecraft and then plant a real garden
Recognizing that the digital world extends beyond its intended medium, and children can create educational videos for others to improve their gameplay or participate in online forums to share ideas.
Happy playing!
Brittany Huber, PhD
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers