Education Week – Benjamin Herold
One of the world’s most popular video games has made significant inroads into K-12 classrooms, opening new doors for teaching everything from city planning to 1st graders to physics for high schoolers.
The game, of course, is Minecraft, a 21st-century version of Legos in which players use simple 3-D digital blocks to build and explore almost anything they can imagine.
“It’s no longer a farfetched idea that Minecraft could be useful for teaching and learning,” said Joel Levin, the co-founder of TeacherGaming LLC, a 4-year-old company based in Tampere, Finland, that has sold MinecraftEdu, its customized classroom version of the game, to more than 6,500 schools, libraries, and museums. “The conversation has shifted to taking a closer look at the types of experiences that are possible.”
While the game’s power to engage children has made it a compelling draw inside schools, there have been hurdles to its growth.
Three-quarters of teachers now report using digital games in their classrooms, but many remain uncomfortable with integrating open-ended games such as Minecraft into instruction. Minecraft is also not free.
And the game’s surging popularity—a Warner Bros. movie is currently in development, and legions of children spend time watching YouTube videos of other people playing the game—has led to some concern that Minecraft’s creative elements are slowly being replaced by more passive forms of consumption.
Still, Levin said, the game is providing a growing number of teachers and students with opportunities to make profound connections.
“It’s a powerful moment when you take something kids love and are passionate about, and you bring it into the school day, and you say, ‘Show me what you can do with it,’ ” he said.
Millions of Players
Released in 2009, the commercial version of Minecraft is a virtual sandbox, with no set narrative or goal. Players are given tools and opportunities to build, create, destroy, and interact with each other. (In Minecraft’s “survival” mode, which is separate from its “creative” mode, players must find food and avoid animals and monsters that are trying to eat them.)
In March 2014, the computing and software giant Microsoft Corp. bought the game’s creator, Swedish developer Mojang, for $2.5 billion.
If that seems like a lot of money, consider: A June 2015 report by international gaming-research and -analytics firm Newzoo tagged Minecraft as the second-most-played computer game in the Western world. Newzoo estimated last fall that in North America and Western Europe alone, 36 million people play Minecraft.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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