Dive Brief:

• More classrooms are beginning to use Minecraft, one of the most popular commercial video games on the market, as an instructional tool.
• The game has spun off an education-centric version, MinecraftEdu, which can be used to teach geometric concepts through its world-building approach and easily differentiated for students at various grade levels.
• Some teachers have couched students’ gameplay in larger curriculum units. For example, teachers at Hulstrom Elementary in Denver used the game to introduce fourth graders to Colorado state history, read primary sources, and prepare oral presentations.

Dive Insight:

The game comes with drawbacks too. For one, it’s not free. Each license costs between $14 and $18, and the software required to run costs schools $41. Teachers also say that the game works best as an instructional tool when they also have outside support like a tech specialist or a librarian.

But the education spinoff also signals a growing understanding among game developers that in-classroom uses can be a good place for the kind of open-ended play that Minecraft offers.

"We're at the beginning of creating new kinds of virtual-reality learning spaces," Jordan Shapiro, a game-based education expert, told Education Week. "I think Minecraft is the beginning of that."