Two teachers have come up with instructive and fun ways to use Minecraft in the classroom.

Minecraft is a game popular with both children and adults that is described simply on its website as a "game about breaking and placing blocks."

Inspired by a famous art gallery using Minecraft to create 3D worlds based on artwork, "Matthew Bell, a primary teacher at Stackpole VC school, pitched the idea of using Minecraft to his class," according to an article on TheGuardian.com.

The mix of middle school aged students "decided to use the game’s tools to recreate the school building. 'We had only planned to work on the project during lunch times, but the children enjoyed it so much I let them continue to work for the rest of the afternoon,' Bell says.

Some of the tasks to get the project going were more time consuming than others. In order to make the most accurate representation of the school building, they "measured every part of the school to calculate how many blocks they would need for each room and had to decide whether to round up or down measurements. They also learned how to estimate for external structures."

Similarly, a third-grade design teacher incorporated Minecraft into her curriculum in her "Destination Amazing project." In this project, Elisa Farrell's eight and nine year old students used reading resources to pick different environments and then used Minecraft to recreate their choice.

"Before they began building in their environments, students had to make a scale drawing of their plans and calculate the areas and perimeters of different buildings," according to the article.

At the end of the project, the "class experienced first-hand the difference between renewable and non-renewable resources. They also learned about the trading economy, keeping a record of their trades via the in-game chat log."

Farrell said that she was pleasantly surprised that her students continued working on their projects during school snow days. "'When I signed back in I saw rollercoasters, machines, a haunted house, a castle, an underground maze, a mall and a zoo,' she says."

Read the full article here and comment below.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor