david smeaton

Hi I'm David. Post grad (doctoral) student and Minecraft player. Currently beginning my PhD in game based learning.

Academic keywords: minecraft, learning, education, participatory learning, social learning, creativity, skills, games, original content, sharing, experiential learning, game based learning.

My main interest is skills building through gaming. People who play Minecraft are creating enormous amounts of original content on youtube, twitter, reddit, and other forums. As well, they're making skins, developing mods and hacks (*cough* nodus *cough*) and are developing an entire ecosystem around the game of Minecraft. Through content creation, people build skills and share it online. This is participatory culture and social learning.

It's an incredibly fun and immersive learning experience.

Interested? Follow me or help me with my studies by sharing your own knowledge and works.