Games in education

Games in education.  Aside from this class, integrating games into education is something I've been exploring at work as well.  Early last year, I discovered some math based games, and began introducing them to my students as a change of pace to break up long class periods.  None of the games linked there are particularly great, but it was a beginning.  My students responded well to something that seemed less like work and more like play, and really enjoyed having some ability to choose between different games.  Since then, I've been searching for more, better games for my students.

What I'm particularly excited about right now is the prospect of introducing one of my favorite games, Minecraft, into my classroom.  Minecraft is a sandbox game, with no objectives other than survival.  Players can explore, can dig for rare resources, or can construct elaborate structures.  This freedom will allow students to pursue objectives with very few restrictions in a multiplayer, collaborative world.  Also, because the entire world is made of 1m x 1m x 1m cubes, Minecraft seems very well suited for exploring 3-dimensional geometry.  Most exciting to me is that I wouldn't have to completely invent the mechanics of introducing Minecraft into my classroom.  A teacher in New York named Joel Levin has been exploring this idea for years, and blogs under the name The Minecraft Teacher.  He also creates YouTube videos about his adventures teaching with Minecraft, such as this one:

What I'm most excited about is the product he created called MinecraftEDU, a custom version of Minecraft that is specifically designed to give teachers the ability to easily create custom Minecraft worlds that are set up for specific lesson plans.  I'm in the process of getting this software package for my school so that I can begin exploring it and creating lessons for my students.