Apodaca: Educators mining Minecraft for learning

What if there was a way for students studying history to build a replica of Ancient Rome? Or for kids learning about California missions to forgo the sugar-cube models — projects that well-intentioned but misguided parents often take over anyway — and instead design and construct their own versions of missions?

These and a nearly endless array of other hands-on learning experiences are possible with Minecraft, the blockbuster computer game that in just a few years has drawn legions of devoted followers around the world largely through word of mouth. Now, an educational version of the game is getting its first tryout in Orange County schools, thanks to the county Department of Education, which offered its initial Minecraft training class for teachers this past summer.

Minecraft, for those of you as clueless as I was, isn’t just some mindless, shoot-’em-up electronic entertainment. First released in 2009 by a Swedish game developer, it is a “sandbox” game, meaning that it doesn’t have a plot or scripted objective. It allows users to start with an essentially blank canvas to create structures and entire worlds with blocks they mine from the ground — a feature that has prompted some to refer to it as a virtual Legos. But players must switch to a survival mode during the virtual nighttime, when monsters threaten to destroy them and their work.

More than 54 million people worldwide have purchased Minecraft so far, and unlike most other electronic games, its popularity extends to adults as well as kids. The game’s huge following caught the eye of Microsoft, which earlier this month agreed to pay $2.5 billion for Mojang, the company that developed Minecraft.

A letter first published on fortune.com in the wake of the announcement exemplifies Minecraft’s beloved status.

Written by a 10-year-old girl, the letter pleads with Microsoft not to change the game: “People like me love Minecraft the way it is — educational (parents really like that part) and really fun. Minecraft is educational because you have to earn your stuff. If you want milk, you milk a cow. If you want diamonds, you start mining.”

The educational potential has not been lost on a small but growing group of ambitious, forward-thinking educators who believe that if we’re truly serious about reforming schools and enhancing critical thinking skills, then we’d better be open to novel ideas. Minecraft, many believe, offers just the sort of opportunity for a rich, immersive learning experience that’s needed to further the goals of the new Common Core educational standards.

The impetus to bring Minecraft to local schools came from Randy Kolset, the Coordinator of Online Learning and Professional Development at the Orange County Department of Education. While attending a conference two years ago, Kolset was wowed by a presentation demonstrating the game’s educational possibilities.

Last summer Kolset led what he hopes will be the first in a series of training sessions on the educational version of Minecraft, which allows teachers to control the environment in which students work, add their own content and modifications, and connect students so they can collaborate on projects.

Eight teachers from throughout the county signed up for the class, each bringing a kid along to try out the suggested projects.

“They were so engaged, so excited,” Kolset said.

The game offers endless opportunities for students to utilize different disciplines in an imaginative, problem-solving environment, he said.

“I’ve seen it applied in almost every subject area,” he said, from a social studies unit in which colonial Jamestown was recreated to the modeling of a human digestive system.

Kim Bass, a third-grade teacher at Robert C. Fisler School, a K-8 campus in the Fullerton School District, signed up for the Minecraft training after reading a magazine article about the educational possibilities of the game and watching her teenage son play it for years.

“When Randy put out the flier (for the class), I thought, ‘How did OCDE know that I wanted to do this?’”

Bass initially assumed that Minecraft would be a useful tool primarily for teaching math concepts. But she quickly realized that other subjects offered equal potential. “I have big ideas,” she said.

She’s now trying to raise the $1,800 she estimates will be needed to acquire the necessary licensing to use Minecraft in the classroom, and is hoping to get the program up and running by next month. One idea she has for her third-grade students is to recreate the city of Fullerton, a complement to their social studies unit that would also require math, language arts, and critical thinking skills.

“That’s why this game is so wonderful,” she said. “It lends itself to that interdisciplinary Common Core — the whole problem-solving, thinking, making decisions. What I love about this is it allows kids to make mistakes, brush themselves off, start again and say, ‘OK, what did I learn from that?’”

Kolset hopes to offer more Minecraft training in the future, but plans for more classes are now on hold due to the Microsoft acquisition.

Hopefully, the delay will be short, and the next time training is available many more than eight teachers will sign up. Minecraft might be just a game, but it represents the kind of creative investment that could pay dividends for students for some time to come.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.