All students and teachers at KCUSD have Minecraft: Education Edition licenses. Minecraft: Education Edition is the "regular" version of Minecraft with a few extra blocks and features added to make it more beneficial for schools.

Our schools are exploring how to use games like Minecraft in the classroom. We are investigating ways we can use them to teach the things students need to learn. That means when we "play" Minecraft at school it is for a specific purpose.

Good games, like Minecraft, can have profoundly positive effects on learning. When playing games, players build a strong sense of identity. They empathize with their character. They interact with others in the game and become part of the story - the experience. They take risks in the game and fail often, yet enthusiastically come back to learn more. They have control over their environment, eagerly accept challenges, work toward mastery to improve their knowledge and skills, and integrate new vocabulary with high efficiency because they experience it in the game. Game play can be highly self motivating and engaging.

Teachers want students to use Minecraft to design, build, interact, and show and tell what they learned from the class lesson. Can Minecraft (and other games) be used to "test" student understanding in a format that is motivating for students? Research (here, here, and here) suggests that it can.

Minecraft at school is not to be used for "free-play" without teacher approval. Accounts are free for students and can be used outside of school. Students can download Minecraft: Education Edition for home use here, but should never share their account information with anyone else. If they do, they may lose access all assignments and saved worlds.

With Education Edition, anyone can start up a world they want to explore and complete an activity by themselves, or in small groups. They can import worlds made by others and export them to your friends and teachers.

At school, students will be asked to explain what they are building to their teacher, take and share screenshots, create video tours and travel through worlds while following directions along the way.