The Insane Ninja Zombie Minecraft YouTube Channel started one warm,
sunny, day when a dad, Insane Ninja Zombie, age unknown, and his two sons, 13
year old Skullhead 1022 and 7 year old Crazy Legs Zombie decided it would be
fun to make YouTube videos about Minecraft.
It was the kids way of tricking dad into letting them play Minecraft for
an unlimited amount of time each day.
Their plan was simple: play the
game as they taught dad all about Minecraft.
However, dad had different ideas for his kids.
To start the “PLAN” and to set dad up, Crazy Legs Zombie
challenged Insane Ninja Zombie to a friendly game of Egg Wars in the Cubecraft
server. Within seconds, it was obvious
that dad would need some serious Minecraft tutorials to learn how to play this
game. He was absolutely no help to his
multiplayer team member, didn't know what the object of the game was, and last
but not least, lost the game to his 7 year old son in a matter of seconds.
The kids sensed something that day that would change the way
gaming was played in the Zombie household.
Hating to lose, they knew Insane Ninja Zombie would become more
determined than ever to learn Minecraft so he could one day, play on other
servers like Mineplex, and beat 7 year old Crazy Legs Zombie. They just had to magically, and secretly,
entice their dad into wanting to learn Minecraft and someday “WIN.” There was a little insult here (Dad, can you
believe a 7 year old beat you?), a little insult there (You sure didn’t last
long? We thought you could do better!) .
. . two kids had begun to play cat and mouse with their dad. The war had begun. . . . kind of. Did the kids actually outsmart old Insane
Ninja Zombie? Not so fast.
In the past, Insane Ninja Zombie realized the amount of time
his own kids spent watching new Minecraft videos instead of interacting with
their mom and dad. As a teacher, Insane Ninja Zombie knew the benefits of kids
playing video games as well as the enjoyment students get from learning the
technological side of Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
Instagram. That's not saying unlimited
gaming is beneficial, but a regular daily routine playing specific games is a
good idea.
Insane Ninja Zombie understood the benefits of his own kids
being part of a family friendly YouTube channel that would have no bad words
and focused on fun. It was also an
opportunity for Insane Ninja Zombie to test the educational benefits that Minecraft
had to offer. Could this game be used to help teach concepts like goal setting,
problem solving, role playing, just to name a few? With a little thinking, planning, and
playing, Insane Ninja Zombie came to realize the higher levels of learning that
are incorporated into a single Minecraft game played by people of all
ages. It was the curriculum he taught
his students in Grade 5 all the time.
Believe it or not, Minecraft basics and gaming taught the cognitive
skills that teachers set as learning objectives throughout their entire
career. Every teacher knows about
Bloom’s Taxonomy and Minecraft seemed to be a good fit.
Bloom's Taxonomy is a model used to classify learning
objectives into domains that focus on cognitive (knowledge), affective
(emotional), and psychomotor (movement) development. Kids playing Minecraft are learning how to
remember, understand, and apply during their play. More importantly, the higher levels of
cognitive development like analyzing, evaluating, and creating, are the very
basics of Minecraft. If you don't do
these things, and do them well, you will not be good at the game of Minecraft. Kids are good at Minecraft, some extremely
good. As adults, we just don’t know
enough about Minecraft. The kids aren’t
going to say, “Hey mom, I just developed plans for a new building in my head
and then applied those plans into a complex creation that looks exactly like
the building that is down the street in our neighborhood” or “I had to analyze
15 different possible outcomes for the decisions I was about to make while
trying to survive while reviewing my complete inventory as I followed the map
to the extension of the world that I made last week.” Did you know your kid was even capable of
this, never mind doing it on a regular basis?
Here’s the trick and the challenge.
How can we transfer these Minecraft game skills into everyday skills
that can be used throughout the lifelong learning of these gamers?
At the age of 7, Crazy Legs Zombie destroyed me in seconds
and hung me out to dry. Why? His knowledge of the game is good but his
ability to analyze, evaluate, and create are much better than I was ever expecting.
His brain has been trained. How do I know? Try playing a game of Tic Stac Toe (3D game of
X’s and O’s) with him. He will beat you
in minutes. His cousins, one a PhD
biologist that lectures around the world, and the other, a civil engineer, are
routinely at the losing end of his Tic Stac Toe play. It was once a joke to lose to a 7 year old,
now, it’s become serious.
Check back as I continue to use Minecraft to teach students in my class and relate it to common curriculum.
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