FMS Room 110

t possibility that some students may take pictures that they shouldn't be taking. Given that

n be very competitive, fighting for popularity among their peer gr

ce mails.

how they are interacting with thei

Some ideas include: letting kids share what they are building in the game and having

students who know how to mod can teach others how to do so; and devoting some class or after-school time to allowing kids to work on Minecraft-based assignments. It has been noted that Minecraft offers a way to

Parents: you might be sick of your kids asking to play Minecraft, but consider what the game is teaching them. Talk to them about what they are building and what they are learning. Encourage their cooperation with friends. Where else are they learning some of these skills? Easily put: nowhere. When we encourage the enthusiasm they have for the game, we are also subtly communicating that we like for them to spend time creating, building, and cooperating with peers—values we want our children to develop as they work to reach their post-graduation goals.

Playing Minecraft teaches kids useful skills. The most clearly visible are visuospatial reasoning skills—learning how to manipulate objects in space in a way that helps them create dynamic structures. Visuospatial reasoning is the basis for more abstract forms of knowledge like the ability to evaluate whether a conclusion logically follows from its premises.