Minecraft: A New Era of Educational Gaming?

By Austin Lee — Posted on: Mar 09, 2015

Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of Wesley Fryer

MinecraftEdu, a custom educational release of the hit video game Minecraft.

Do you know what Minecraft is? If you don’t, chances are you can find out from nearly any elementary school student. With nearly 19 million sales, Minecraft is one of the most popular PC video game titles of all time. It’s not just children who are interested in the game though. Several teachers across the US and Denmark have incorporated Minecraft as a curriculum elective. The company TeacherGaming has even gone so far to create a custom edition of the game called MinecraftEdu that serves as a virtual educational platform where teachers can create or import lesson plans for their students to interact with.

So why has Minecraft suddenly attracted the attention of educators? Although there are other games on the market with a similar level of appeal to school-aged children, Minecraft has open-ended “sandbox” gameplay, where players are free to create and explore whatever they like within the virtual world. In a sense Minecraft is like super-powered virtual Lego, and that feeling of infinite possibility is what attracts children and educators alike. From building challenges to touring through models of historical sites, Minecraft offers a huge range of educational opportunities for educators to engage their students.

Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of Eric Walker.

This custom map lets players explore 1:1 scale models of famous structures throughout history.

Beyond the screen, parents praise the game for motivating their children to develop their research and English skills in trying to read books, guides, and a myriad of other resources dedicated to the game. Minecraft has also been noted to allow children to develop their virtual social interaction skills in a safe and controlled environment that’s not inundated with the insults, threats, and hate speech that’s evident in many social media platforms.

So what does Minecraft mean for the future of education? Have educators finally found the perfect fusion between education and video games in the form of 16-bit blocks? Only time will tell, but the future looks bright.

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