My kids are serious Minecraft maniacs. As are most in the US today, it seems. I am seeing more and more businesses related to Minecraft popping up. Especially of interest to me are the sites that integrate Minecraft with education!
My kids have taken classes at both GamED Academy and Homeschool with Minecraft (a site now, sadly, gone) and loved it!
So it’s got me looking for more ideas for using Minecraft and homeschooling…Googling is turning up new ideas!
This page is a place for me to save all the links I’m finding around the net for homeschooling with Minecraft. Enjoy! And if you have more to add, please comment below!
- GameED Academy–“Exciting Academic Curriculum, Safe & Monitored Minecraft Servers, Voice Chat with Peers, Growing Social Skills, Team Building, Creativity and Fun! With courses in History, Science, Creative Writing…“
- Minecraft EDU–bringing Minecraft to the classroom. You have to have an Office 365 Education account for this. But I hear amazing things about Minecraft EDU, if you can get into it!
- Skrafty Homeschool Minecraft classes–Online classes (This is a religious-based server…I have heard there are religious elements here and there. But I have never experienced it firsthand.)
- Ideas for Minecraft across the curriculum–page of links
And also: A book!!
12 Comments
Youth Digital offer a great Minecraft mod design online course. Highly recommended! We got a greatbdiscount througg Homeschool Co-op website.
Haha, luckily they can’t judge what we wear through computer screens 🙂
Thank you for this list! I appreciate it. Even GameED Academy… She has some great options and we are totally okay with the modesty part 🙂
Which minecraft are you using for homeschool? I purchased Minecraft Pocket Edition, however, it is not at all what I thought it would be. I think I may have purchased the wrong edition.
Yeah, Pocket edition is not the full version. You have to go to the Minecraft website to purchase the full version for your computer. That’s the version we use, the pc version. Pocket edition is for mobile devices, and I’m told by my kids it is missing a lot of features.
Here’s an article that compares the 2 a bit: http://www.learningliftoff.com/better-minecraft-pocket-edition-minecraft-pc/
When you order the PC version is it for only one person? Or is it like the xbox version where multiple people can have a profile? I have 4 kids and that could get expensive.
I checked with my 17yr old daughter whose been playing Minecraft since she was quite little, and here’s what she says:
“Yes, the pc version is just for one person… If multiple people want to share an account you can create separate worlds and each person can have their own world, but you’ll have to share a username and skin. And if they want to play together with each other on a server, you’ll have to have an account (and computer) for each person. You can change your skin whenever you want, but you can only have one skin at a time. Multiple kids on one account, would all be wanting to swap out their skins all the time…and they’d have to decide on one username.”
If you can get the Education version of Minecraft (hard as you have to buy it in volume from Microsoft) then the game comes with much more content, like chemistry & physics. Check it out as its mind blowing and the kids are glued to it and are being taught without even knowing!
Wow, thanks for the heads up! I had meant to pursue this and got offtrack! I’ll look into it again! Thanks!
Hi we’ve just started on GamED Academy and finding it really good so far – the vids are a bit patronising but we’re getting used to them and the info is sinking in. The Science class so far includes digging for fossils and bones and nothing Creationist…as yet….will be keeping en eye out for anything evangelical snuck in though!
GamED Academy isn’t as bad anymore and the old owner left, the newer owner is much more laid back and doesn’t really care about skins as long as they aren’t naked or bloody.
I just finished making a Minecraft Boom Learning deck to teach my kids grammar. It’s free if anyone is interested. Please share if you like it! Thank you!
https://wow.boomlearning.com/deck/minecraft-grammar-episode-1-statements–questions-XnQZSA9NBjnD5i9Bt