Minecraft Education Edition

I was a massive Minecraft player as a kid, not that I don’t still play it cause I totally do, so I am very jealous that I never got to use this when I was in school. I went and played a couple of the modules, and have provided my thoughts on the experience!

Detect and Diagnose by Causeway Digital

Description: “Detect and Diagnose was developed for Minecraft by the Ruth Strauss Foundation to increase student’s awareness, knowledge, and understanding about parental cancer and to create a safe and open environment where cancer can be discussed. Get hands on with the processes and technologies that real doctors, nurses, radiologists and pathologists use and become a cancer detective”

The premise of this game was that you enter the hospital as a medical student. You are advised to head to the Cancer department, where nurses tell you about lung, breast, and skin cancer. You answer questions to Dr Ferguson asks you based on those discussions, and then take Peter to radiology. Peter gets an xray, and you learn to read it. You identify tumors on xrays, including Peter’s tumor. Then, we learn about how to do a biopsy and the process of identifying cancer in the sample in the pathology department. Turns out Peter did have lung cancer, but we caught it early, and you’re done!

I thought it was fun and informative, perfect for kids. I’m a fan of medical things, so of all the science options, this immediately caught my eye. I think giving students a place to explore the concept of cancer and get some education around very common types is both educational scientifically, but also health wise and social emotional learning wise.

Buildability by Minecraft Education

Description: “Welcome to BuildAbility. Players will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by those with disabilities by learning about five types of accessibility barriers. This world is designed to help students understand, identify, and work to eliminate accessibility barriers in their school and community.”

I loved seeing a land acknowledgement in the game itself, especially a module about inclusivity and accessibility. This game allows students to explore different types of accessibility barriers and offers realistic examples, such as a child who uses a wheelchair being unable to access the playground and play with their peers. I am very passionate about accessibility as somebody with a physical disability, and I found this module a very approachable, low stakes way for students to engage in the topic. My critique is it’s a lot of looking around a reading but not a lot of doing, which could get boring.

Overall Experience

My conclusion is that Minecraft Education Edition is awesome and I’ll probably end up exploring some of the other modules simply for my own amusement. Bonus information, I attempted a paleontology module prior to the accessibility one, and messed it up and quit because I could not replay the instructions, so I imagine using this in the classroom would definitely entail playing the module through yourself before using it with students.