Who would have thought that a game with 1980s-style graphics, with zero marketing dollars and with only a nine person team behind it would capture the minds of millions of youth? Minecraft, a sort of building block virtual world, is now being extended into the education realm through the work of MinecraftEdu.
MinecraftEdu is tailored to the teacher’s cirriculum and it is relatively inexpensive (at up to 50% of the retail cost).
It easily lends itself to science, technology, engineering and math explorations (STEM). But beyond that, language teachers are strengthening communication skills, civics teachers are exploring how societies function, and history teachers are having their students recreate ancient civilizations.
They will soon be providing workshops and inservice training for teachers on how to use this truly engaging interactive platform.
A description of the capabilities can be found here:
http://minecraftedu.com/mod.php
On a personal note, seeing how engaged my boys and their friends are with Minecraft, I have thought that the teaching community could leverage this platform as an educational tool. It will be interesting to see what sort of traction this platform receives.
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