After launching an educational version, Minecraft has more than solidified itself as a valuable educational resource that more and more teachers are using in their classroom.
According to Mark Lorch and Joe Mills, two veteran educators in science and technology fields, the ability to create complex structures through Minecraft also makes it a must-have for chemistry class.
Mills’ and Lorchs’ students at the University of Hull have created Molcraft, an undergraduate project and Minecraft "world with structures of proteins, chemicals and even some chemical history.” This world can be downloaded and run with various machines for classroom use.
"There are plenty of accessible molecular visualisation tools, both physical and virtual. But now we’ve used Minecraft to turn the process of exploring and learning about molecules into a game. MolCraft contains a scavenger hunt, quizzes and clues dotted around the world that can be solved with the help of information found during players’ explorations,” the article said.
And it doesn’t stop there. The two educators are actively working to continue developing Molcraft as a useful resource.
"As well as making MolCraft available to download for free, we’re also working on ways to further integrate the software into education. One idea is to turn it into a complete online learning environment, where students can complete coursework, write assignments, take part in quizzes or help developing other teaching resources, all within the game.”
Read more about Molcraft here.
Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor
10/30/2015
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