From toddlers as young as my three year old granddaughter who adores the four pigs created for her in her sister’s Minecraft world, to gaming enthusiasts of all ages, students are leading the way in showing parents and teachers just why Minecraft has captured the hearts and imaginations of over 100 million gamers around the world.
And fortunately this ever-increasing enthusiasm for the open-ended Minecraft game can now be channeled into our classrooms, thanks to teacher, Joe Levin, who started a company that created MinecraftEdu, a school-friendly version that is being used as a teaching tool to stimulate learning and develop creativity in over 1700 classrooms around the world.
According to James Drzewiecki, author of the online EducationWorld article, “Why Educators Should Use Minecraft in the Classroom,” http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/benefits-minecraft-classroom-students.shtml, MinecraftEdu is a game modification, referred to as a mod, that truly makes Minecraft classroom friendly. It allows teachers to “incorporate their own curricular content and run a custom server for each of their classes”
Here are just a few of the many benefits that exist for students when using Minecraft:
Freedom to create – students can push their imaginations to the limit to become “creative in ways not possible in the real world”
Development of critical thinking/problem solving skills – students must tap into these skills to move forward with their constructions and acquisition of vital resources needed to survive
Facilitation of communication/collaboration skills– students often need to rely on others for help in order to survive in this very social game. In this way, a positive classroom climate is built and teamwork develops organically as students work together in an imaginary world where each person’s unique skills and abilities are recognized and appreciated
These are considerably impressive benefits for a video game. And if teachers and parents – and grandparents, too – everywhere allow themselves to be led by their students and children and grandchildren, I have no doubt that more adults will find their own hearts and imaginations captured by Minecraft. Then we will be reading about the ever increasing number of classrooms utilizing MinecraftEdu and how students all over the world are experiencing, as Drzewiecki commented, the endless possibilities of the world of Minecraft.