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Minecraft
I could not get Minecraft to work on my computer. It was the most frustrating thing ever! After Mikah (my lovely roommate) started playing I wanted to play too and I spent about an hour trying to download all of these different things. Minecraft ended up not working and so I ended up watching Mikah "struggle". Mikah spend about a good 30 minutes trying to get wood as suggested in the youtube videos. We could not figure out how to get the wood until our friend Ashley came in and called her brother. Later that night, he called and told us exactly how to get wood. Rather than clicking over and over we realized we could just hold the clicker of the mouse down (duh?). Are we too old and out of touch? I felt that I was so lost in technology that I could not even get Minecraft to work on my computer. It's safe to say that Mikah and I have not played it since... If we incorporated this into the classroom, there would have to be a demo and the glitches on certain computer types would have to be figured out!
Comments
frustration!
I am sorry this was such an exercise in frustration. You are right, in a classroom it would need more careful scaffolding. I wonder why the game is designed to be relatively hard to enter/access? To make being an insider more precious, more of a boundary-cross? Do you think your frustration sheds light on what it's like to be a struggling neophyte in a field/arena/subject? Do you think if you had not felt time pressure, it would have been easier for you to explore and struggle without as much frustration?