Minecraft in the Classroom
A few years ago I came across a Youtube video called How to Survive the First Night in Minecraft. It was created by the now famous Youtuber, BlueXephos and was a video showing how to survive the first night in Minecraft. Now both BlueXephos and Minecraft gained tons of fame all thanks to the internet. With the rising popularity Minecraft sold over 8 million copies on PC and altogether 17 million copies across all platforms it’s available on. It was only a matter of time until Minecraft was being considered as a classroom tool. I have heard stories and seen videos of teachers using Minecraft in the classroom and students using Minecraft to recreate historic sites as an alternative to a project. Minecraft and the education world were starting to merge. I stumbled upon Joel Levin, otherwise known as the Minecraft Teacher. He used Minecraft in his classroom. Eventually he had so many students interested in Minecraft he started several after school clubs. Joel worked together with several other people and created MinecraftEdu. MinecraftEdu is a modification to the game that teachers can use to have more control when teaching with Minecraft. MinecraftEdu and Mojang (the company who made Minecraft) were able to agree at providing educational discounts for buying large numbers of accounts. I would absolutely love to implement a Minecraft club at my practicum school. Unfortunately, the laptops are a couple years old and I am pretty sure they can’t run the game. First of all I would have to convince my school to let me run a club after school. Secondly I would have to talk with the IT specialists and get a server running. I just don’t think it is possible. I know the children would love it! Games based learning is something I am very interested in. There are so many children playing games. They pour hours and hours into these games repeatedly trying to beat level after level even if they fail multiple times. They remember names of weapons, characters, worlds, and stats of characters. If only we could have children this engaged while learning! Just think of the possibilities! I think that Minecraft and MinecraftEdu is a great way into this new world. If you want to find out more about Joel Levin you can just go to his Tumblr page http://minecraftteacher.tumblr.com/, or follow him on Twitter @MinecraftTeachr. I suggest watching his Youtube videos on his channel - MinecraftTeachr. Take a look at www.minecraftedu.com to find out more information about MinecraftEdu.