Talking to Parents about Minecraft

Collaboration - group projects involve collaborative planning, working, and problem solving between students and their teacher. Students learn to negotiate, listen, debate, follow directions, and accept criticism.

Creativity - students are inspired and challenged to create and recreate anything they can imagine or that they see in their world. Projects can increase in complexity as students are challenged to build to scale, or with limited resources.

Differentiation - Minecraft can remove language barriers for students and can present multiple ways to explore, understand, process, and create content.

Digital Citizenship - Minecraft can reinforce concepts like respecting the work of others, etiquette when chatting online, and that everything online is permanent.

Engagement - staying current with modern teaching and best practices increases student engagement. It is possible for students to have fun and learn at the same time!

Independence - video games like Minecraft have a very shallow learning curve for children. Learners who frequently need assistance in other classroom activities thrive in the game.

Leadership - with Minecraft, students are the teachers. They WANT to be the first person to answer questions and help classmates learn and advance. As students emerge as mentors to classmates, they develop more confidence in themselves.

Relevance - look around! People have their heads buried in their devices all day. While it might not be the world we grew up in, students today were born into this world and technology will be a part of their lives regardless of their future career.