Millions of students use Roblox and Minecraft to create characters and build entire worlds. As educators search for ways to boost student engagement as they inject real-world relevance into their lessons, finding creative reasons to use these platforms in the classroom becomes their goal. Should you start teaching with Minecraft and Roblox?
“Why Minecraft? Why Roblox? Your students are already on these platforms and they absolutely love them. That doesn’t necessarily make for a great teaching tool right off the bat, but the engagement is there,” said Matthew Kreutter, a product manager for Connected Camps, during an ISTE Live22 session.
A Connected Camps team led session attendees through some brief examples of how they can begin teaching with Minecraft and Roblox with simple coding and building activities.
Meeting students where they are, and teaching them content via a platform they already use, creates direct positive outcomes in building interest in that content. What’s more, Minecraft and Roblox take core ideas from popular games and learning tools and make the possibilities infinite.
“This idea that interest-driven learning directly influences longevity of engagement drives our belief in the power of Minecraft and Roblox as teaching tools,” Kreutter said.