As long as games have existed there have also been educational games. The main purpose in these games have been to learn mathematics, geography, history or any other subject you can find in school books. Besides these games having in common being educational they have also been quite boring. At least for the kids soon turning to be teens who have often access to the Internet and are aware of the huge amount of amazing games available out there in cyberspace. Because of this it has for a very long time been hard for parents to encourage their kids to stick with the educational games when the other options obviously been more fun.
However, the last couple of years we have been seeing a whole different trend grow. The simple answer to this change of trend is Minecraft. The game has been incredible popular for years and it doesn’t seem to be changing in popularity as it continues to grow everyday. When the creator first sat down to create the game it was never his intention to make it an educational game but as the game progressed through different phases it has come out as one of the best games available in education currently out. Hundreds of schools have already implemented Minecraft in their classes and in some cases even made it a mandatory subject.
MinecraftEdu
Joel Levin, one of the creators of MinecraftEdu, is the main key to why this introduction between Minecraft and the educational world have happened. MinecraftEdu makes it cheaper and easier for schools to implement it in their classes. It is a collaboration between the MinecraftEdu team and Mojang, the creators of Minecraft.
The reason to why Minecraft is working so well as an educational tool is because there are no already set up missions in Minecraft. Players are put in a world where they decide what happen next. The game offers many real life similarities which makes learning real life physics and such easier.
Kids Decide for Themselves
Parents don’t have to be pushing their kids no more to play games which they want them to play. Instead they choose Minecraft themselves because it’s a sociable, fun and an interesting game to play. Even though Minecraft does offer some features which isn’t directly teaching them anything, such as zombies trying to bite them or skeletons shooting arrows at them it is still a game packed with features which your kid can benefit great from.
One of these features include a server client package anyone who own the game can download. You can then edit and add on top of Minecraft extra functions and share it with your friends. To be able to make these edits one must learn java and as java being one of the most popular and used programming language in the world you can already there see the huge benefit of Minecraft as a foundation kids to learn programming.
The Growth Continues
As long Minecraft continues to grow in the right direction as it seems to be doing right now I see no reason to why it ever will stop to be a great game for kids to play. Not only is Minecraft a great game for our youth to play but it can also teach adults one or two things about minerals we have underground or how to be as functional as possible in a society you decide to build in this world of blocks.
I have played Minecraft on multiple occasions with younger relatives and I can never stop to be amazed by their creativity in the game and how much they know about it. If you have kids or know kids who play Minecraft. Try to play the game with them and you will just as me be astonished by their knowledge.
This post was brought to you by Jake who currently helps and manage a sub section on MinePick which is a server list for Minecraft. For years he has been playing Minecraft and continues to be passionate about the game.