Minecraft PE is Awesome! (Review)

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Minecraft coming to the iPad gives me hope that we can finally get some great education games on the iPad.

If you have been living under a rock (or perhaps in a mine) for the past few years, you may not have heard about the Minecraft craze. A few years ago, a low budget production house called Mojang released an “Inde” game that allowed you to roam a made up world and create anything you want. It met amazing reviews and that small design house is now a multi-billion dollar business. Recently, it was announced that Mojang would be acquired by Microsoft.

The game itself is simple, you have blocks, and you mix those blocks together to make other blocks. That can be a forge, a table, or just the walls of your amazing Castle. There is widespread appeal in this game, since it is at heart a block creativity engine (think digital legos). Students can play the game with friends and build their favorite places. In adult versions of the game, people have created the lands of Middle Earth, Westeros, and even a replica of the Earth.

In a classroom setting, I have seen students create replicas of historic buildings to explain how they were built and the challenges with building those items. My STEM students used redstone (what is electricity and wiring in minecraft) to create elevators and cannons – which take some very sophisticated wiring and electrical engineering.

Minecraft is an app that every child should have on their devices and be able to play.

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 The Video Review

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Overall Rating