Minecraft game gives teachers new learning tool

Montour at forefront of modern method

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After they sat down at their desks at Montour Elementary School, the students quickly dove in and adjusted their characters and settings within their personal Minecraft accounts.

Beth Hobbs, their third-grade teacher, flitted among them reminding them to focus on the task at hand: building a house using their multiplication tables. They could add the trees and flowers later, she told them.

“I’d rather do math on the computer than do flash cards, because flash cards give me a hand cramp and I don’t like that,” said Nakiyah Williams, 9, as she logged onto her touchscreen computer in the school’s Minecraft lab.

Montour School District administrators say that was the idea when they began looking for ways to incorporate the popular video game into the classroom — not just preventing hand cramps, but doing more to engage students using a platform they’re already familiar with.

As explained on the school’s website, Minecraft is an interactive game where participants dig (mine) and build (craft) different kinds of 3D blocks within a world of varying terrains and habitats.

Ms. Hobbs, who has taught third grade in the Montour district for 12 years, was selected to join 340 educators from around the world this year as a Minecraft global ambassador, participating in monthly Skype discussions with her fellow ambassadors about how to include the game and other technology in their lesson plans. The school in March is poised to host Minefaire, a convention for educators and fans of the virtual building game.

“It was a team effort,” said Justin Aglio, Montour’s director of student achievement and district innovation. “It was just Montour reaching out to Minecraft to find a way to get kids interested in learning.”

Since the district’s new, stateof-the-art elementary school opened at the start of this school year, representatives from more than 80 schools and districts across the state and beyond have come to observe classes, administrators said.

Montour purchased Microsoft’s Minecraft: Education Edition — the version of the game tailored specifically for the classroom — last year, after Ms. Hobbs had success with her students using the program.

Two years ago, she had one of