MinecraftEDU is a fairly new platform that is the brainchild of a teacher who began using Minecraft and found it’s value in the classroom. Upon initial review of Minecraft, if you were to just watch a video or observe the student using this JAVA platform game, you may wonder what the real value is and what’s the point? In interviewing a student on the value of Minecraft, if they are dedicated player, they can wax poetic for a very long period of time about the value that it can bring to the classroom. In Northern California, I’ve been following a movement around the use of Minecraft EDU in both classroom environments and afterschool programs.
Why do I love Minecraft? I love Minecraft because my eight-year-old loves Minecraft. He has catalogued 80+ hours of video watching various Minecraft GURU’s talk about their builds, their worlds, and their edits to mods. He can also add/modify code via command line which he began doing when he was seven.
As an introduction to the world of coding programs, Minecraft is a Java-based open platform (means it can me modified–think MODS). There is nothing in comparison with the exception of MIT Scratch for students in the K-12 setting.
Here are a few MinecraftEDU resources for anyone interested in evaluating this tool and integrating it into their curriculum. You can outfit a lab for a very low price and servers can be set up on another computer: It does not impact the infrastructure with TCO in an unreasonable way. Its very appealing in communities that may not have the money to buy a solution that can impact students in such a meaningful way. More on this topic to come…
Best of luck and play:
MinecraftEDU Resources:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/minecraft-teachers
http://theminecraftedclassroom.blogspot.com/2014/03/minecraftedu-bootcamp.html?spref=tw
makingmakersinedu 