With MinecraftEdu, are video games the future of education?
Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it had acquired MinecraftEdu, an education-oriented version of the popular video game.
U.S. President Barack Obama talks with Adrianna Mitchell a student from Newark, New Jersey, taking part in an "Hour of Code"? event at the White House in Washington in December, 2014. In his State of the Union speech on in January, 2016.
Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it had acquired MinecraftEdu, a classroom version of the popular video game Minecraft.
Prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, MinecraftEdu was , a collaboration between teachers and developers in the United States and Finland. The company released another game, KerbalEdu, based on the space-flight sim Kerbal Space Program, in 2013.
鈥淏y creating a virtual world [in Minecraft] and then advancing in it, students can learn digital citizenship, empathy, social skills and even improve their literacy 鈥� while getting real time feedback on their problem solving skills from the teacher," wrote vice president of worldwide education Anthony Salcito in a blog post that .
The original Minecraft was , more widely known by his nickname, Notch. The game allows users to mine, harvest, and build using cube-shaped blocks that represent different natural and manufactured substances within a virtual world. Minecraft users can craft swords, bake cakes, and create circuits.
MinecraftEdu differs from the original game in that it is an adult-controlled platform, where the that students enter when they join the game. Teachers therefore use the game as a controlled educational tool, with specific projects and goals in mind.
The idea that Minecraft has value as an educational tool is not new. Just two years after Minecraft was created, Daniel Short published a brief paper in the journal Teaching Science that discussed the . Dr. Short identified several areas in which Minecraft could be used to teach children. Microsoft鈥檚 acquisition of MicrosoftEdu will allow a wider audience of educators to use the game in classrooms.
Numerous studies have found that creativity-minded video games can increase student engagement and teach substantive concepts.
According to Mr. Salcito, Minecraft is already in use in more than 7,000 classrooms worldwide. With its acquisition by Microsoft, its reach will broaden even further.
Video games have been used by teachers since 1979, when students at Carleton College in聽Northfield, Minn., created the game聽Oregon Trail with the history of westward expansion in the United States. Since that time, teachers have used video games in the classroom with increasing frequency.
In 2005, author Steven Johnson wrote in his book "Everything Bad is Good for You" that, far from rotting brains, video games to think differently and more creatively.聽
As recently as 2014, Scientific American wrote that although educational ,鈥� critics still argue that they bear little fruit in terms of actual learning. Video games have also been prohibitively expensive in the past, and often train working memory rather than creative thinking.聽
Despite these objections, video games are now beginning to be widely used in classrooms. According to a 2014 survey, 55 percent of teachers who use video games in the classroom at all use them . There are even schools, such as the in New York City, that focus on video game based learning.
Part of MinecraftEdu鈥檚 value as an educational tool lies in its applicability to any number of disciplines. The company鈥檚 website notes that teachers have used the game to , from creative writing and art to math and science.
Educators and computer scientists increasingly agree on the importance of teaching children to interact smoothly with the digital world. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology鈥檚 Lifelong Kindergarten Group has developed what it calls a that allows children to interact and innovate.
According to a 2013 TED talk by Mitchel Resnick鈥檚, one of the learning researchers who developed Scratch, 鈥渁s [students] learn to code, it many other things.鈥� Children who become 鈥渇luent鈥� with the digital world will grow up to become better innovators and citizens for the future.
Computer science teacher Jason Wilmot of Lincoln, Neb., shared his views on the importance of in a YouTube video posted on his website. Mr. Wilmot says that, 鈥渨hat kids want is to be met with something they find interesting, something they find relevant... If you鈥檙e listening to what kids are saying, there鈥檚 a lot of them talking about Minecraft, about apps, about these dynamic environments that let kids control their own learning.鈥�