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"Teaching Scientific Concepts Using a Virtual World - Minecraft"

The official wiki for the minecraftEDU community. Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools--a modified Minecraft server and client--that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in your classroom.

It's been almost a year since I first wrote about the work of Joel Levin (aka " The Minecraft Teacher") bringing the 3D world-building game Minecraft into his second-grade classroom. Much has changed since then -- the full release of the PC version of the game, for starters.

I recently returned from a holiday in Orlando, Florida, where I was privileged to be able to attend "Minecon", a convention for the popular sandbox game "Minecraft", developed by Mojang AB. Personally I'm a big fan and long term player of the game, and I'm amazed at how this 'phenomenon' has swept across the world.