Minecraft for Education – Part 2

[In part 1 of this topic, I gave a very brief overview of Minecraft in comparison to SecondLife, and ended by noting how the creativity, exploration and collaboration elements of the game were catching the attention of educators. This is the subject I address further here.]

My son first brought Minecraft to my attention almost a year ago, when he asked my approval to spend the money to buy a copy, because “other kids at school” were playing with it and he wanted to join in. At the time, the cost was about $10. I didn’t quite “get” it when he first described it to me, but liked the retro look that it had and the cost was trivial. He encouraged me to download a copy to play with, which I did, and he gave me a couple of quick starter points. The next several hours disappeared as I explored, dug, collected and built. I’ve played a couple of times since, but I’ve kept myself from becoming addicted by simply not launching the game too often.

I have, however, become an consumer of Minecraft-related information online. There are quite a number of videos on YouTube, both of tutorials and guides, but also of the beautiful creations. It’s like an 8-bit version of “Cribs” or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” My recent favorite is the video below, a recreation in Minecraft of notable places from Studio Ghibli films like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Porco Rosso.

So, I was happily surprised to come across the recent article on the “Eureka’s Castle” site about Joel Levin, a New York City teacher who has begun using Minecraft in his elementary classrooms. He built a custom world in Minecraft to first teach the kids how to use Minecraft, and is starting to explore ways to use Minecraft in the curriculum. His blog, The Minecraft Teacher, describes his experiences, includes videos of his Minecraft Tutorial World and his teaching, and has links to other Minecraft-in-education stories.

Similarly, Lucas Gillispie, an Instructional Technology Coordinator in North Carolina has created the Minecraft in School Wiki, to host “ideas, lessons, implementation strategies and more related to using the game, Minecraft, in a school setting.” The wiki is still in the early stages of development, but there are already placeholders and some brainstormed ideas for lessons on cartography, language arts, mathematics, and science. Not surprisingly, Gillispie has created similar wiki sites for “iPod Games for Learning” and “World of Warcraft in School.”

What exactly can you do in Minecraft that is educational? The following video is just one example of a student project, a recreation of the Alamo for a school assignment. Clearly this required researching history, some 3D construction skill (but nothing like SecondLife), and embedded other aspects of the assignment.

For now, the sites exploring educational uses of Minecraft are largely geared to K12 education, but I expect that to change over time. SecondLife took a while to really make inroads in higher education discussions, but eventually did and many schools (and companies) spent a lot of money to develop virtual real estate there. I believe the barrier to entry for Minecraft is much lower and is easier to control. For that reason alone I expect more people to begin examining the possibilities. If nothing else, our education and teacher-training programs should at least introduce products like Minecraft as potential tools to encourage student learning.