Today I stumbled upon an article about a teacher using Minecraft in his lesson plan.
Full Article here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/educational-building-blocks-how-minecraft-is-being-used-in-the-classroom.ars

I think it's great that kids are getting involved with not just computers but the social aspects of being connected in a virtual world. "Hold on!" you say; "That was quite the string of buzzwords!" I apologize. There certainly were a bunch of buzzwords but let me explain.

This teacher is using Minecraft to make the computer class more interesting and who could blame him? Games are fun! But Minecraft being very open-ended lead to things that I see that naturally occur even when we are playing. Territorial disputes. Building with limited resources. And most of all teamwork. This is were I believe my string of buzzwords comes into play. Being "LAN gamers," I would like to claim, that we are more social than just "gamers." We like the interaction with other people but there are times when it is difficult. Personality conflicts are just facts of life but we normally find ways of dealing with issues in a civil manner. One of the topics brought up in the article is about when these disputes arise they can stop and have discussion(s) about what is going on face to face. This is something I hope the kids can take away from these classes.

On a side note hopefully this will spur on another generation of LAN Gamers!


Blog: http://minecraftteacher.tumblr.com/

Normally would be a key word there.