"Minecraft," Teachers, Parents, and Learning: What They Need to Know and Understand.

Abstract

IntroductionIn this article, we explore how teachers can utilize Minecraft in the classroom to promote creativity and learning in ways that would afford more educational benefits for students. Minecraft, a digital sandbox and pixilated video game, allows individuals to freely create and manipulate their own simulated worlds, which enables them to have full control to design these worlds in intentional ways. With over 100 million users registered (including 6 million Xbox gamers) in more than 66 countries, more than 1 billion hours played, and over 130 million worlds created (Makuch, 2014), Minecraft is one of the most discussed video games for youth and adults (Junco, 2014) and adds to the high popularity of video gaming worldwide (Jenkins, 2006). We learned that Minecraft is not simply a video game that allows youth to build and create virtual worlds; Minecraft has now become an educational tool used a vehicle for teaching critical content. Youth who play this game have the ability to take control and be active learners, thus enhancing their motivation for learning (Junco, 2014). It also acts a supplement in today's classrooms-a popular learning activity in content areas such science, math, history, engineering, architecture, and computer coding. Minecraft also helps students achieve the goals of the Common Core State Standards (Lorence, 2015; Magee, 2015). In fact, MinecraftEdu.com, a platform that is a replica of Minecraft, is made specifically for educational purposes.Situating and Positioning in MinecraftLewis Ellison, a former Title I reading/writing skills teacher and current researcher and teacher educator who has explored adolescents, adults, and families' digital literacy practices-particularly among African Americans (Lewis, 2011, 2013, 2014; Lewis Ellison, 2014a, 2014b, 2016a; Lewis Ellison & Kirkland, 2014)-and Evans, graduate student and former teacher with a background in teaching adolescents how to create digital stories, collaborated with Pike, a fifth grade math teacher who created Mathcraft, a Minecraft curriculum, to share their interests in gaming.We found that the more we talked openly about video games, played them, wrote about them, taught them, and shared them with youth, their teachers, and parents, the more we noticed that Minecraft was a popular game among both youth and adults. We have all felt the angst and confusion of teachers and parents who are curious about Minecraft but do not know the benefits of video games. The need for teachers and parents to understand students' digital literacy practices and the extent to which youth live in the virtual worlds of the 21st century is significant. Youth attend school all day, but text all the way home, then communicate on Facebook, send tweets to their peers, and play video games (Institute of Play, 2012). Today's youth do not separate their conversations between these worlds; rather, they extend them. However, some teachers do not yet understand students' fascination with the Minecraft world because they do not know what Minecraft is, how students actually benefit from the game, or how to apply it to their curriculum.There is an art to the design, manipulation, and overall practice of video games like Minecraft that makes youth passionate about more than the device they hold in their hands. Hollett and Ehret (2014) describe how playing Minecraft reshapes the social, relational in which adolescents use it and helps them understand this space of gameplay as populated with agentive, affecting, and affected bodies-both human and nonhuman (p. 2). That is, students are able to foster agency through this video game. Indeed, youth involvement with video games is often misunderstood by stakeholders (e.g., teachers, administrators, parents) a practice that is irrelevant and time consuming. This dismissal may stem from a lack of information on how, according to Renzhog, Aner, and Leijo (2013), video games are the forefront of innovations and digital services, predicted to be one of the most growing forms of media and expected to rise in sales to $82 billion in 2015 (p. …

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