Minecraft & MinecraftEdu: An Original Essay

So, I was asked a while ago to post the essay I wrote for my English 111 class somewhere viewable online. Since I'm trying to bring my blog back to life, and I don't know how to upload it to Google Docs without my full name showing up, I thought, what better place than to post it than here? While it's not professional or in any way a scholarly article, I'm still really proud of it and the "A" I received for it. :) So here it is, in all its glory, for everyone's viewing pleasure. Excuse me as I go off and squee in a corner. X)

(essay after the jump)

[originally written by Roxie J******s on April 8, 2013 for English 111]

Summary-Exploration of Minecraft in Education

In 2012, 2 Player Productions released their documentary titled Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, which documented the histories of Minecraft and Mojang AB, from just after the game’s initial alpha release up to the year of the film’s premier. The documentary focused on their success, and their cultural and gaming impact, featuring interviews from the developers and other big names in the Minecraft online community, as well as interviews from other people in the gaming industry. When I first saw the movie via its Xbox-streamed release day, one segment of the documentary really hit me and got me thinking. It was the segment featuring Joel “The Minecraft Teacher” Levin, a computer teacher at Columbia Grammar School in New York City, who is the co-owner of TeacherGaming LLC, the creators of the official education version of Minecraft, MinecraftEdu. During his interview, he mentioned that he had always been a gamer and talks about how he’s “a big believer [in] bringing games into the classroom. I think it gets the kids really excited about being here, being in school, being in my class…kids are excited about games. This is where they live… [they go home, they play games; that’s what they’re excited to talk about with their friends. It’s this generation]” (Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, 1:05:08). Seeing this example of the game being used as an educational tool shocked me into wondering and searching for the ways Minecraft could potentially be used to teach and its possible benefits.

Could Minecraft pave the way for the inclusion of video games in educational uses?

Minecraft is a three dimensional, Lego-esque, non-objective indie game, categorized as a “sandbox,” that was originally created by Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson, and fully developed later on by his company Mojang. It was released mid-2009 on the PC as an alpha version and then released in full in late-2011, with the following 2012 release on the Xbox 360 in conjunction with Scottish game developers, 4J Studios; all versions are periodically updated by Mojang and 4J Studios respectively, with the PC version updating weeks before the others. As a sandbox game, Minecraft doesn’t follow the traditional workings of most games, an example being getting the “hero” from point A to B and “saving the world.” However, the game does have one main goal: survival.

You start off in a new world with only an empty map in your inventory, which fills in as you explore the world at-large and gather materials to build a shelter to survive the night, because as soon as the sun goes down, monsters, or “mobs,” come out and kill you on-sight. Once you’ve gathered the basic materials, you craft them into tools in order to gather more materials, make even better tools, and get more materials, all so you can fortify your home, create a reliable food source, and survive. That’s it. This game-type is aptly titled “Survival Mode” and is featured alongside “Creative Mode,” where any-and-all possible materials in the game are readily available in the expanded inventory, as well as the options of flying and customizing the environment through certain commands. Minecraft also has a third mode, Multi-Player, where you can either play in the same world with friends on a personally hosted server, or online with tens to thousands of other people worldwide on multiple hosted servers. This opens up multitudes of customized, user-created game-types, maps, and adventure packs that you can play with others, along with the basic survival and creative modes.

In “Explore, Create, Survive,” Erin Daly, a librarian in Massachusetts, discusses the positives of using Minecraft in schools for educational purposes. With her light, yet informative style, she introduces the reader to Minecraft as something flexible with many possibilities for such usage. In the article, Daly argues for the use of Minecraft in the classroom; with her own experience in using it at her school’s library, she sees the potential benefits. She also talks about other schools and the educational version of the game mentioned above, MinecraftEdu, which is available at a discounted price to schools and teachers. As an education tool, Minecraft can be seen as relevant to today because we’ve entered the age of technology not only being used entertain us and keep us safe, but also with the potential to be a more immersive teaching tool in schools; a view that’s started with these last two generations growing up in the internet age. Daly goes on to list what some of those teaching benefits can be: computing basics, which I’ll touch on later; modeling to teach architecture or have “tours” of historic places; mapping to teach coordinates and charting, possibly even typography; basic economy based on multi-player server settings; even engineering with the game’s equivalent of circuitry, Redstone. She also mentions machinima, defined as the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering to create a cinematic production, for storytelling, and using inspiration from books create fictional places (figure 1), tying in to both machinima and modeling.

Fig. 1: Recreation of the HBO Game of Thrones' set, King's Landing, in Minecraft.

All of Daly’s proposed topics for Minecraft usage seem sound; it is a computer game, so of course it should tie-in with computer lessons. With computing basics, students could learn interface basics, like creating a log-on and password; keyboard skills, for typing and following directions with the teacher; and becoming familiar with various operating systems. Nevertheless, going back to the current younger generations: why not teach them some social and reading skills while they learn internet familiarity? The age of children with internet access is getting younger and younger. When playing on servers you interact with other players towards the common goal of survival, though not always together, or in a physical proximity of each other; this means you have to be able communicate and Minecraft has a built-in chat system in place to rectify this. There are even signs and writable, in-game books (figure 2) to pass information and instructions back-and-forth between players, or even lessons between teachers and students.

Fig. 2: Example of a written book/sign in MinecraftEdu.

I can see someone using MinecraftEdu to teach all of these on top of teaching children to become digital citizens, the commonly used term defined by K. Mossberger, et al. as “those who use the Internet regularly and effectively” self-aware and safely use the internet as they grow up.

Despite the examples Daly gave us, I wondered about other topics you could use Minecraft to teach. Can it be used to teach history? What about sciences and math? I had seen the example of using it to teach elementary school students, but could it hold up to higher-level education? In his article, "Teaching Scientific Concepts Using A Virtual World – Minecraft," Daniel Short first compares Minecraft to early model simulation games based in ecology that “modeled the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock” (qtd. in Short 55), such as the 1990s Balance of the Planet and SimEarth, as well as 2008’s Spore. Like Daly, he also sees a potential to using Minecraft in the classroom, though he seems to prefer it as a supplemental aid rather than the foundation of the lesson. In my opinion, I agreed with Short on this view more than Daly, who seemed more ready to dive headfirst into a change like what’s being discussed. I feel that it’s something that needs to be slowly cultivated so educators can work out the bugs and become more familiar with it. Keeping this perspective in mind, Short’s article proposed various scientific topics and hypothetical situations that Minecraft could help guide students with in learning.

Fig. 3: Functioning model of a neuron in Minecraft.

I tried imagining how I would use Minecraft in a science class and thought of when my 7th grade earth science class. We were learning typography, both on land and in water, but were limited to sharing the only 3D model available among the twenty-five of us. If we’d had Minecraft back then, even with only the teacher’s computer and projector available, I think we would’ve definitely benefitted from having a more “to scale” model to use. For math, the blocky composition of Minecraft’s terrain and materials could have provided an amazing challenge in geometry during high school; I can picture the frustration of trying to make an acceptable circle. Granted I feel this frustration when I try to make circles in the game nowadays, so it wouldn’t be too different. My high school physics class would’ve probably used it the most, though; having our circuitry labs with the ability to construct functioning ones, without the loss of materials, would’ve made my teacher hop for joy! So, is that a shining hypothetical of Minecraft’s potential to teach engineering, too? Turns out, hundreds of schools have been using MinecraftEdu to teach these subjects to higher-level classes already. Even some elderly students are in on it (figure 4)!

Fig. 4: Joel Levin teaching students of various ages with MinecraftEdu.

            Thinking on all of this, I can only begin to imagine how far Joel Levin can take MinecraftEdu in the future. It’s only in its beta stages now, but having recently inched into the thousands on the amount of schools using it, I think it has a bright future. Notch, as he says in the documentary when asked about MinecraftEdu, had no idea his game would go as far as it has, let alone spawn into the education field. I honestly can’t figure out how he didn’t.

Works Cited

Daly, Erin. "Explore, Create, Survive." School Library Journal 58.5 (2012): 24-25. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.

Fig. 1. Pizzainacup. Recreation of the HBO Game of Thrones' set, King's Landing, in Minecraft. Digital image. Gizmag: Hardcore Minecrafters Build Immaculate Clone of Game of Thrones' King's Landing. Gizmag.org, 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2013. <http://www.gizmag.com/minecraft-game-of-thrones/26036/>.

Fig. 2. Kurland, Anne. Example of a written book/sign in MinecraftEdu. Digital image. Learning to Swim: Delving into MinecraftEdu. Wordpress.com, 6 Mar. 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2013. <http://annekurland.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/delving-into-minecraftedu/>.

Fig. 3. AllUpInHyuh. Neuron! Digital image. Imgur. Imgur.com, 23 Mar. 2013. Web. 5 Apr. 2013. <http://imgur.com/a/09Hf3>.

Fig. 4. Joe Levin teaching students of various ages with MinecraftEdu. Digital image. MinecraftEdu: Bringing Minecraft to the Classroom. MinecraftEdu, n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2013. <http://minecraftedu.com/credits.php>.

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang. Dir. Paul Owens. Perf. Joel Levin. 2 Player Productions, 2012. Xbox Live. 2 Player Productions: Game Culture Archivists. 2playerproductions.com, 22 Dec. 2012. Web. 22 Dec. 2012. <http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft>.

Mossberger, Karen. "Digital Citizenship. the Internet.society and Participation By Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Ramona S. McNeal." Scribd. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

Short, Daniel. "Teaching Scientific Concepts Using A Virtual World - Minecraft." Teaching Science: The Journal Of The Australian Science Teachers Association 58.3 (2012): 55-58. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.