Frequently, I hear parents complaining about their child playing Minecraft. Not only they are playing Minecraft, they are watching all of these videos about Minecraft. Parents are concerned that it will never end and that its a waste of time. Well, I made the mistake. I watched some of the videos with my 1st grade son and watched him play. No, lets be honest, my wife is traveling with my oldest right now so I had some free time. I earned some father of the year points and was an audience for his interests. I discovered a few things in the process:
Minecraft is teaching my child to read. For a child who began the year with limited decoding and who's teachers have helped him break the code. On Minecraft he is learning to read words like potion, swift, and obsidian. Not only is he learning to read them, he is learning to spell them. He needs to label things from time to time, so he does. My child knows that no one will be coming to help him, so like many great utilitarian learners, he is figuring it out.
Minecraft is intensely social. There is a common language that we adults really don't speak. Whether they are five or fifteen, they know what a creeper is, what spawning is, and what mods are. Furthermore, it is a forum that welcomes all to play if they choose. How often do we hear children say, "Can you join my world?" This is the start of a collaborative conversation that happens both orally and digitally. Children learn to work, share, and play together. They are helping each other. Occasionally, a child plays improperly and destroys things on another child's world. This is like every other childhood challenge that the children need to work through and figure out how to handle. The best part is, because we don't understand Minecraft, they often develop solutions to this without the assistance of adults.
Minecraft is engineering. My oldest child is my digital learner, my younger one is my engineer. He is the Lego child. However, he has discovered Legos are limiting. We only have so many, finding the right piece can be a challenge, and projects can only become so big. Minecraft is his own CAD tool. He builds structures first in Minecraft and then, if he wants, he builds it in Legos. Minecraft is a realm of unlimited virtual Legos. He can build anything, anywhere. It has rules of 3D spatial arrangement. There are limitations that impact each world. Gravity still exists. Furthermore, these are Legos he can build with anywhere and show friends anywhere. These constructions are ones he can give everyone a tour of. Minecraft has tools that he couldn't build easily with Legos. It has switches and tracks. It has lights and torches. It has all sorts of textures. The little man has created roller coasters out of coal cars and tracks. He has built Rube Goldberg like contraptions with switches and tracks. He has also discovered that some resources are limited, that he has to work to discover them and have patience as they develop. Minecraft provides a realm for him to develop and explore.
The children are developing their 21st century learning skills from Minecraft. Those videos, yes the annoying ones that they watch endlessly, are simply walk-throughs that are teaching concepts and skills from the game. They are no different than adults watching HGTV, Food Network, or students learning from Khan Academy. Children are taking key information from video and applying it in an area of interest. This is a flipped classroom that the students want to attend. Furthermore, in a digital world, this is how they are going to gather information. They will be searching the web to find small chunks of data just as they search now to find Minecraft Wikis. They will be watching videos with bursts of procedural knowledge just like they watch the videos of Minecraft now. They will also learn from their colleagues, just as they are having to learn from other children through the game.
Finally, Minecraft allows children to build their own worlds and create their own stories. It has moved beyond block construction, allowing for animals and vegetation. Growing up, many of us wanted to build new cities and new civilizations. Minecraft is providing the beginnings of this for our children.
While the neighbor stills plays basketball outside daily, my children prefer soccer. They like to go to camp and the pool, just like we did. While they don't play pinball, their version of Atari is far more interactive than mine. Minecraft is allowing children to safely build wings in a connected society. It's doing it in a relatively inexpensive way. For some bandwidth, the family computer, and $27 for a family membership ($7 if you are in the android/iOS world), the children enter into a creative space of exploration. It prepares them for a connected society in a way the toys of our generation never did. Whether I was playing with the Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure or Grimlock the transformers Dinobot, the interaction was only a couple of us, often dominated by the limitation of the toy itself. Minecraft connects children into a world of discovery, preparing them for a future of innovation in a global economy.
*Atari, Intellivision, and Colecovision games can still be played today if you hit the links from a computer and have Java installed.
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