Abstract:

As the digital transformation of society continues, there is a need for children to develop and enhance their critical media literacy skills and competences. Cognitive defences in children aged 8-12 may not be mature enough to understand the persuasive intent of many messages they are exposed to. There is an opportunity to empower children through education, enabling their development as active and critical consumers of media messages. Promoting multiple media literacy education in primary schools is one way to address this need. Recognising that much learning happens not only within the classroom but outside of it, there is an opportunity to develop approaches to pedagogy that combine and/or cross boundaries between spaces and roles, developing teaching materials that extend to the third space. Conceptualisations of the third space include the merger of learnings from a child’s informal learning experiences, for example with peers, and their formal learning experience, for example in school. Developed in 2016, Minecraft Education is an educational extension of the video game Minecraft. It is a game-based learning platform that enhances STEM skill development while promoting problem solving.

This paper discusses the development of the Minding Media Minecraft World and its instructional manual. As part of the Erasmus+ Minding Media project, Media Literacy Education is extended beyond formal learning in the classroom, into the third space, by means of a Minding Media Minecraft World. For children, the Minding Media Minecraft World facilitates immersion, going beyond the scope of traditional classroom techniques to be able to highlight the persuasive intent of organisations, reinforcing cognitive media literacy defences over time. For educators the Minding Media Minecraft World provides an innovative educational resource designed to instil critical advertising literacy and digital literacy skills in young people. A step-by-step instructional handbook supplements the teaching resource, providing educators with a walk through of each of the challenges and quests.

The Minding Media Minecraft World, together with a Minding Media Video Training Library, and 8 step by step Minding Media Lesson Plans, are being designed as part of an Erasmus+ funded project. The overall objective of Minding Media is to engender in children advertising literacy and digital literacy skills.

Keywords:

Media literacy, advertising literacy, digital literacy, gamification, Minecraft, problem based learning.