My daughter has been a Minecraft player for several years now.  I love how engaged she is in the building and understanding how one thing leads to another.  Many people do not see the benefits of Minecraft and think it is more of a game than a learning tool. 

Below are some of the benefits of Minecraft:

·         Confidence booster: As the “player continues to see that their planning and hard work will result in something truly remarkable, their confidence also rises.

·         Memory skills- If you want to create something in Minecraft, you need the right pieces and elements. These memory exercises will also help sharpen the memory for all areas, including school work.

·         Minecraft allows players to explore their creativity as a team effort.  They also learn valuable social skills as they take the role of leader, builder, organizer, etc. They must take their role and do the best they can as part of a team effort. For example, education experts consider Minecraft a precursor for social networking. Since the younger students playing the game are not yet old enough to join sites like Facebook, Minecraft is an excellent tool to prepare them for the realities of that online world. With Minecraft, young students are given the opportunity to communicate with their peers online, which will teach them how to interact with others on different parts of the Internet.

·         "Kids are getting into middle school and high school and having some ugly experiences on Facebook and other social networks without an understanding of how to interact with people online," Joel Levin, Cofounder and Education Director at TeacherGaming, tells The New York Times. "With Minecraft, they are developing that understanding at a very early age."

·         Minecraft teaches that each mistake is a learning experience.  Many learn more from mistakes than other ways of learning.  This is also true of Minecraft.  The player will make mistakes and from those mistakes, they will also learn how to overcome those!

·         Minecraft helps with math skills. In math, the player must think about how many blocks you would need to make a wall? How many for their house? What is the volume of the house? How many sticks and iron ingots do you need for a full set of iron tools?

·         Science skills are tapped as they discover what materials will do the best job for the application they are working on.

·         Engineering….  This is an obvious one.

I can only begin to tell you about the number of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences that are being used as a part of Minecraft.  

·         Visual – Spatial is on overload as this game is all about engineering and building. This is a simple form of 3D modelling that will help the player in the future.  At Caterpillar, we use Pro-E for our blueprints and 3D modelling.  Minecraft is a simplistic version of this software but is also quite similar. 

·         Interpersonal – The Minecraft learner can interact with countless others as they work on their creation. 

·         Intrapersonal – Minecraft allows players to learn on their own and to explore their own interests and goals.

·         Logical – Mathematical – Minecraft allows the player to explore reasoning and calculating, to think conceptually, abstractly and are able to see and explore patterns and relationships.

Minecraft is truly a remarkable tool.  I encourage its use with all of my students from high school to college.