How Minecraft Is Becoming A Teaching Tool In Schools
Minecraft – you've probably heard this video game title multiple times as for now, maybe from your peers, your younger siblings, your kids. Maybe you're playing Minecraft yourself? It's not embarrassing to use your knowledge in this game, the age of more than 100 million of its users ranges from the youngest to the oldest. One of the most popular games nowadays that's only been outsold by Tetris so far is gaining more and more popularity day by day, teenagers and adults are earning money from playing it and posting their gameplay videos online and… it's used in educational methods. Are we joking? No, we're not. Microsoft released an educational version of Minecraft specifically called Minecraft: Education Edition or MinecraftEDU for short. But let’s understand what this game is about first.
Minecraft is a three-dimensional sandbox game without a complete goal. Your only aim is to survive, enjoying your time in the universe made of blocks. 3D cubes are arranged around it to create water, wood, earth, sand etc.; you can use them as your resources and create different useful tools. The blocks can also be placed in different locations, making it possible for players to build anything their soul desires. If you play in a story mode, you'll be making your way to the boss represented by a dragon and your goal is to defeat him.
So what’s so good about the game in the classroom? Well, we’ll tell you several reasons to use gaming in education.
First of all, the pupils have huge freedom, making it the best tool for developing creativity and visual perception of objects. As we already stated, it has such a free universe, that children can do practically anything they want using the blocks they found. They can build huge houses or castles, maybe they’ll build an awesome ship and decide to be a pirate, or use their mining skills and live underground. A creative mode in the game proposes inventive players to have time off and just relax while making something phenomenal in this simple world. The recreation of scenes from movies, cartoon characters, fictional cities – anything is possible in this 3D reality!
Secondly, the kids can use their problem-solving skills. Sure, sometimes students don’t need to be very skillful at something because we have things like research paper writing service canada. Although, gaming is fun, so why don’t we educate them this way, too? It’s not a secret that Minecraft fictional world can be very harsh at night, especially in the survival mode. You’ll have to defend yourself from a list of night monster creatures, including creepers who blow up, skeletons who shoot you with their arrows, zombies who desire to eat you alive, and so forth. Not only that, but you’re also ought to create weapons to fight with the monsters described before, find something to eat, which requires fishing and hunting skills, find fire and build yourself a house to call home, and have a bed to sleep in. Every part of this challenge pushes you to use your brain logically, counting and planning a ton.
Lastly, when having a stable internet connection you can always play with your friends or classmates, enjoying a feeling of collaboration and learning to communicate at the same time. You can decide what to do together, be it mining the new material for your weapons and armor or defeating the Enderdragon boss, and just give out commands, assigning different tasks to every group or person you play with. Live chatting is a huge part of this gamer communication so everything you say needs to be understandable and convenient. With this part of gaming process, the sense of time and space also comes into play, making a kid decide and count how much time they have to spend on various tasks, how much food they are going to need for traveling and how many material blocks are required to build and create items.
Next time someone asks you about the value of video games in our life, you know how to answer them and what example to give. If your sibling or kid begs you to play with them – don't hesitate and get to know this phenomenal game if you still haven't. And if you did – congratulations, maybe in the future all the skills you've learned and developed will help you in the real harsh world, not only in the 3D one.