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Learning through Minecraft??

So, I'm about to nerd out and be completely honest here: I love video games. My little brother and little sister and I play them all the time together and we've all become pretty competitive when playing. One of the games that my brother and I really got into was Minecraft. When playing Minecraft, you're giving two options: you either get to choose a game mode or a creative mode. In the game mode, you are spent going through the game, killing all of these bad specimen that come at you and are required to build a house and hunt and capture all of these resources to create a good life for your person in Minecraft. Now, the fact that all of these random monsters were coming at me, terrified me to no end, so I would always end up dying and doing poorly at the game. That's when my brother introduced me to the creative mode. In this mode, you don't have any monsters coming at you and you can just create whatever you want and store your creations on that mode. You have an unlimited amount of everything and it is purely a mode for enjoyment. My mom used to get furious at my brother and I for spending hours on this game as we built things and had our eyes glued to the television for hours on end. Eventually, I ended up playing it less often and my brother ended up growing out of it and fell in love with one of those more recent games. But when I come home for break, both of us find time to play it because it is very relaxing for us.


What most parents don't understand is that Minecraft is actually a very great game to enhance the learning skills of a child. According to an article on Lifehack.org, accessed December 1st, 2017, "Minecraft teaches resource management, problem solving and teamwork skills. It also improves creativity". I don't think many realize that Minecraft is just a virtual version of Legos. Although it is not physically attainable, the point of Minecraft, more specifically in creative mode is to create. Students who play Minecraft can have a guaranteed improvement in their creative skills. It encourages them to think outside of the box in a land built on blocks. In regards to resources, in the game mode of Minecraft, you are given a limited amount of resources. In order to gain more of them, you are given a treasure chest to store extra items, a pick ax to get materials, and then the clothes on your character's back. Everything else, you are required to find and kill, or destroy in order to claim that item. It teaches the player to be resourceful with their spending and their time. The day goes by really quickly in this game and once it is dark,  your character has to sleep because creepers and other monsters will come out and try to attack you and destroy some of your belongings, for example, a herd of sheep that you are storing for food may be eaten by these monsters if not stored in a safe place. Overall, I believe that Minecraft can be a beneficial learning mechanism because it encourages creativity, helps students know their limitations when it comes to spending, and managing resources, as well as improving teamwork skills, too as those playing the game interact with one another often.




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