All Minecraft all the time

I had written over the summer about the benefits of Minecraft and why families should be encouraging use of Minecraft for homeschooling purposes. This piece was more of a way to convince families that it was ok to let the kids go and use this spectacular educational tool for whatever inspired them! Shortly after, several friends asked me about limiting screentime and how I manage to maintain balance at home.

As Minecraft becomes more ubiquitous, more people have asked me not why we're using it but HOW we're using it. The kid has managed to convince me that Minecraft really does relate to everything in life, so I encourage you to ask YOUR kids how you can use Minecraft at home as well. I promise, they have a hundred ideas if you just let them run with it!

Book Walk-Thru
The kid doesn't like to write. He hates to write actually, and due to some motor coordination issues, writing actually causes him significant pain and takes a million years. In discussing book summaries, and how setting is important, he asked me to allow him to do a walk-thru of the main setting of the book The Maze Runner. He did this project last year and it was his first attempt at screencasting a Minecraft walkthru. We talked a lot afterwards about controlling your video movement, using a storyboard and how to make sure your thoughts are clear before you start talking.

Historical Architecture and Tours
Remember having to make a California mission in 4th grade? Or building some other absurdly expensive, large project that your parents ended up having to help you construct at home? Take the same project, put it in Minecraft and you now have a high-interest, easily manageable and historically accurate architecture project. You could even find some villagers to work in your Colonial shop or man your California farm fields! In this screencast, you can see the immense amount of architectural work, and understanding of symmetry that goes into building in Minecraft. He also demonstrates a solid understanding of the components of a ziggurat. Still working on not making people dizzy though! In this screencast, nearly a year after the first, he's describing a study of ancient Chinese tombs. He's definitely gotten better at not making you feel like you're spinning in circles!

Online Collaboration and Netiquette
Perhaps one of the most unexpected lessons to come out of Minecraft for us, is the lesson of how to deal with people online. Quite often, the kid is playing online with people that he doesn't know in real life. He takes several online classes through Minecraft Homeschool and Athena's Academy and both require online collaboration, conversation and negotiation.

Learning how to get the rest of the group to work together, in a timely fashion and create a project that meets the requirements of the assignment is a tricky, political and complex requirement when you don't actually know the participants. Most of us growing up, learned how to navigate the group project but we always had the social stigma of going to lunch or presenting in class with the slacker that didn't work. How do you figure that out when the slacker lives 2000 miles away? It's been fascinating watching groups of 9-14 year olds sort this out, all online, usually in TeamSpeak but often using in-game chat. As the working world becomes more reliant on online collaboration, this is the most useful skill coming from Minecraft right now and it's not something I can replicate easily at home!

Creative Writing Sparks
As I mentioned, Minecraft Homeschool has several classes that all take place online in Minecraft. Their academic work is required to earn you money to buy bricks for building in Minecraft. It's high interest, engaging and always well managed. Soon, they're also starting up a creative writing class- which offers yet another pathway into using Minecraft for school. This is a pathway I hadn't considered and haven't tried, but I can see how for many kids, it would really spark imagination and creativity!

I'm always looking for new ways to keep our work exciting and engaging. How are you using Minecraft at home?