So if you guys watched our Minecraft and EDU episode
from a couple weeks ago, you'll remember
that we mentioned something called MinecraftEdu made
by Minecraft Teacher, aka Joel Levin, who we happen
to have in the studio today.
So I'm really curious about the moment at which you were like,
OK.
The aha moment?
Yeah, like I'm a teacher.
I'm going to teach using Minecraft.
JOEL LEVIN: Minecraft is just this rare game
that kids of all ages really enjoy playing.
MIKE RUGNETTA: Right, right, right.
JOEL LEVIN: And both boys and girls.
It was over summer break, 2010, I think.
I was playing an alpha version of Minecraft
with my daughter, who was not even quite five at the time.
She learned to spell her first word because of Minecraft.
Oh, what was it?
She wanted to know how to teleport herself back home.
OK.
And you had to type /HOME.
So like what are the things that you teach using Mine--
like what are the subjects?
JOEL LEVIN: I tend to teach just sort
of digital citizenship, the idea of how
we treat each other online.
What I'll do is I'll put the kids in these little situations
where they have to work together.
And maybe there's limited resources,
or I often set different groups of kids with competing goals.
And I've never found a better motivator
to get the kids to learn how to do their own research
on the internet than Minecraft.
But that's just me in my own classroom.
There's teachers having kids fly through 3D models of cells.
There's teachers having the kids fly around the world,
collect a lot of data, and then represent that data in graphs.
One of the problems that a lot of people have identified,
and I had trouble sort of seeing past myself,
was that, well, Minecraft isn't a very realistic simulation
of the world.
Right.
Everything's in a block.
Yeah.
And sometimes you cut down a tree
and, you know, the block doesn't fall, that kind of thing.
But what a lot of science teachers are doing
is they're having kids map the physics of this world.
And where is it the same as the real world?
And where is it different?
MIKE RUGNETTA: OK.
JOEL LEVIN: And they're having the kids design the experiments
to chart this different.
It's teaching the scientific method using Minecraft.
I feel like there's this criticism of things
like teaching using Minecraft and maybe game-based learning,
in general.
I don't think that game-based learning
is going to-- should supplant any traditional learning
methods.
What it's about for me is using a teaching tool
that is really relevant to these kids.
When they're in the moment, when they're
in the game, when they're in a world
that I've created block by block, surrounded
by content that I want them to learn,
I have never had such access to the brains of these children.
And it's been really rewarding for me professionally.
And the science is starting to catch up with this.
It's been really fascinating to see some early work being done
to prove that there is a direct connection
between this increased engagement and the amount
of information that children are retaining.
So if there are teachers out there
who want to get started teaching with Minecraft,
what is the-- what's like the first step?
What's the thing you recommend?
Well, they can go to my website, minecraftedu.com,
and we have some materials to get
started and some ideas for things
you can do with the game.
So I think that's everything that we
have to ask for right now.
Joel, I want to thank you so much for coming in.
Absolutely.
And for everybody who's interested in Joel
and his work, we'll put a bunch of links in the description
so you can check it out.
It's amazing.
Thank you.
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