Unit 6 Learning Challenge: 3D Immersive Technology as a Tool for enhancing Learning

EDU 625: LEarning CHallange 3D Immersive Technology as a Tool for enhancing Learning

A digital story by: William Kenyon

I was looking forward to this learning challenge given I play some of the games we went over in this unit. I did try both Second Life and Kitely – but I found the experience to be… honestly, awful. The controls were complicated and clunky. And the steps I had to go through to install the games, register, and then play were far too much to ask of a student; creating a barrier to learning instead of a bridge. Nothing felt intuitive or organic.

I decided to stick to what I am passionate about in regard to 3D and education – Minecraft. With custom avatars, limitless possibilities, and an extremely easy to use platform, Minecraft was a far better fit for what I am looking for in education and 3D virtual environments. I doubt this comes a surprise to most of my classmates, I have been singing the praises of Minecraft in education since I first started the M.Ed program.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

In my initial discussion post for this unit, I talked about an organization called "Reporters without Boarders" that uses Minecraft to battle journalism censorship by preserving a library of uncensored journalism in a 3D Minecraft world. That library is called "The Uncensored Library" and is free to download – so I downloaded the library to my computer and decided to explore this environment for this week's learning challenge.

A few artistic images of the Uncensored Library.

What I first saw when I logged into the map.

I was greeted by an imposing statue of a fist holding a pen – a symbol and declaration that the pen is mightier than the sword. Everything on this map was placed one single block at a time. The amount of time, care, and love that is put into this project is incredible. The library was built over three months, and is made from over 12.5 million blocks. It took 24 builders from 16 different countries over 250 hours to design and create the library (Meisenzahl, 2020).

Selfie at the library!

I then entered the main lobby known as the central room. The library contains a central room listing the Press Freedom Index and current state of freedom of the press of every country covered by the index. In total, the library contains over 200 different books (Meisenzahl, 2020).

The United States of America ranks 45 from 180 on the Press Freedom Index.

Layout of the library

In the Egypt section, visitors can access news stories from Mada Masr, which has been banned in the country since 2017 (Meisenzahl, 2020).

The Saudi Arabia wing has a jail cell as a reminder of imprisoned journalists, and provides access to the works of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was killed by Saudi agents in Istanbul in October 2018 (Meisenzahl, 2020).

In the Russian wing, news site grani.ru is available to read, which has been banned in Russia since 2014 (Meisenzahl, 2020).

The Truth room. "No freedom without press freedom" is written on the wall behind me.

In the Vietnam wing, read work by Nguyen Van Dai, a human rights lawyer and blogger who was imprisoned in the country before living in exile in Germany (Meisenzahl, 2020).

In the Mexico wing, designers honored the memories of journalists (Meisenzahl, 2020).

If you want to see a video tour of the library, you can check out the video below.

Website and Support

Reporters without Boarders Website: https://rsf.org/en

The Uncensored Library Website: https://uncensoredlibrary.com/en

Meisenzah M. 2020, March 14). Activists created a 12.5 million block digital library in 'Minecraft' to bypass censorship laws. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/minecraft-library-censored-newspaper-articles-online-books-rsf-reporters-borders-2020-3

Created By

William Kenyon

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