Minecraft for Educational Purposes: An Overview
Minecraft, the popular block-based game, has found a new purpose in the educational realm with Minecraft: Education Edition. This version, designed specifically for educational purposes, offers a variety of benefits and features that set it apart from the regular Minecraft version.
Key Benefits for Students and Teachers
Minecraft: Education Edition is not just a game; it's a versatile, secure, and pedagogically rich tool. It includes built-in educational tools and curriculum integration, allowing teachers to create customized lessons within Minecraft, setting specific learning goals, activities, and challenges tailored to subjects and age groups.
The platform promotes creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration, helping students develop skills essential for future workplaces. Teachers and students can use pre-made worlds or build their own, allowing exploration of concepts in science, history, coding, economics, and more within an immersive 3D environment.
Minecraft: Education Edition encourages digital literacy and STEM learning through game-based learning, enabling students to engage with STEM topics interactively, such as conducting virtual chemistry experiments or coding within the game.
Secure Multiplayer Environment and Classroom Mode
Unlike the public servers in the commercial version, Minecraft: Education Edition provides a secure multiplayer mode designed for classroom settings, ensuring safe and controlled collaboration among students. The classroom mode also allows teachers to view a map of the virtual world, zoom in and out, and interact with each student's avatar.
Pricing and Accessibility
Minecraft: Education Edition offers two pricing systems: $5 per user per year for small, single class schools, and volume licensing for larger schools through the Microsoft Enrollment for Education Solutions program. The platform requires hardware including Windows 10, macOS, iOS for tablets, and Chrome OS for Chromebooks.
Portfolio Building and Assessment
Students can take screenshots of their work in Minecraft: Education Edition and send them to teachers for assessment during or after a project task, helping them build a portfolio of their completed work.
Community and Resources
Minecraft: Education Edition provides teachers with lesson plans, tutorial videos, and downloadable worlds that can be used as templates for creating lessons. It also offers a community platform for teachers, featuring discussion boards, collaboration with other schools, and connections to mentors, trainers, and other educators.
Recent updates to Minecraft: Education Edition include Tricky Trials, chemistry items in the creative menu, a camera API, bug fixes, and improvements. Minecraft Education recently announced a Cloud Update that allows users to backup worlds to OneDrive and explore new blocks, biomes, and mobs from the Tricky Trials release.
In contrast, the regular Minecraft version is primarily designed for entertainment and casual play, lacking specific educational features, structured lesson support, curriculum alignment, and classroom management tools that facilitate productive learning experiences in a school context.
Minecraft: Education Edition transforms the popular game into a tool that supports diverse learning objectives and classroom collaboration while maintaining the creative and immersive appeal of the original game. It's a popular game-based learning tool, with the Education Edition played in over 115 countries. Some colleges even use Minecraft to create events and activities.
Inclusive due to its low technology requirements and minimal impact on network connections, Minecraft: Education Edition is a valuable asset in modern classrooms, bridging the gap between entertainment and education.
- Minecraft: Education Edition, a version tailored for educational purposes, provides customized lessons within Minecraft with specific learning goals, activities, and challenges for students based on subjects and age groups.
- This platform encourages STEM learning through game-based learning, allowing students to interactively engage with STEM topics, such as virtual chemistry experiments or coding within the game.
- Teachers can use pre-made worlds or create their own in Minecraft: Education Edition, promoting exploration of concepts in science, history, coding, economics, and more within an immersive 3D environment.
- Minecraft: Education Edition offers a secure multiplayer mode designed for classroom settings, enabling safe and controlled collaboration among students, with teachers able to view a map of the virtual world, zoom in and out, and interact with each student's avatar.
- Pricing for Minecraft: Education Edition varies, with $5 per user per year for small, single class schools and volume licensing for larger schools through the Microsoft Enrollment for Education Solutions program.
- The platform requires hardware including Windows 10, macOS, iOS for tablets, and Chrome OS for Chromebooks, making it accessible for a wide variety of devices in modern classrooms.
