Connecting through virtual worlds

This post is a bit more about my personal life rather than my virtual world life, yet I think it underlines an important feature of virtual worlds and video games.  I recall Dr. Peter mentioning that his interest in video games and virtual worlds stemmed from interactions with his hānai nephew.  Gaming allowed them to connect and find common ground, it inspired a rather quiet young boy to come out of his shell, interact, and engage.  In my own experience as a mother, I am finding similar patterns with my son.  When children are very young, you are the center of their world and they look to you for everything, yet this changes a great deal (as it should) as they grow older.  My son, Keahi, is still relatively young, but old enough to think that mom is uncool and interacting with her is a chore.  If I ask him what he did or how school was, I generally get one or two word answers.  That is unless I ask him about ...Minecraft.

Keahi loves playing Minecraft.  I often use it as a way to motivate him to do other things like homework.  He's learning to read, however is pretty uninterested in the books he brings home from school, except for the book I bought him about Minecraft.  While it's still a little above his level, we practice reading with it.  It's kind of funny because I have never actually played Minecraft, yet I have daily conversations about zombies, creepers, endermen, lava, pick axes etc.  In fact my first exposure to Minecraft was not from my son, but from Dr. Peter's LTEC 643 class.  During that semester Dr. Peter organized a Minecraft Feast event for homeless keiki on the Leeward side.  I volunteered at the registration table and was amazed to see how enthralled these kids were.  Later when I got home, I installed Minecraft on my tablet for my son to try.  He wasn't too interested at first, however several months later he got more into it.  These days it's pretty much all I hear about.

The teacher in my tries to look for ways we can use Minecraft for other opportunities, counting block, practicing writing character names, drawing the characters etc.  A few days ago I was working on the annotated list and watching some Minecraft tutorial, needless to say my son has never been more interested in my homework. While I still have not played Minecraft (and will probably be as bumbling and inept at it as I am in SL and OpenSim), I appreciate the way it allows me to connect with my son.

Our Minecraft drawings