The Best Learning Platform

All city schools transitioned over to a remote learning model on March 15, 2020. Over the next year, teachers would find themselves ignored on various communication platforms, including Zoom and Google Meets. In retrospect, though, it was because the platform that they should have been using was Minecraft.

All the typically-used platforms brought a host of problems with them. Technical difficulties ran rampant. It wasn’t uncommon for a student to find their way to class barred by a request for a Zoom passcode, and the teachers who didn’t know how to “mute all” could only watch as their meetings descended into chaos. The days before disabling annotation was completely figured out were also quite interesting. One student reported, “Right when schools closed, I had to attend a school-wide meeting to discuss expectations during remote learning. Unfortunately, the principal had not yet learned how to disable annotations, and the more tech-savvy students had figured out how to write on her screen. Not two minutes into her presentation, it was covered in… shall we say… interesting images. She gave us all a lecture on maturity and ended the Zoom meeting promptly.”

The moment when students got past the technical difficulties was when the fun really started. Well, not for the teachers—they were miserable. Mr. Clean, a geometry teacher at Bronx Science, reminisced about his Zoom experience. He explained that “half of the students’ Wi-Fi would conveniently crash every time they were called on to answer a question. The other half would be cooking pasta. Many times, students with their cameras off would forget to mute themselves and an array of strange noises would interrupt my lessons.” In a moment of truth, Mr. Clean admitted that breakout rooms were used by teachers to give themselves a break from their chaotic students.

The ultimate question is whether students learned anything from remote school, and the ultimate answer is obviously not, you silly fool. An anonymous survey completed by all HSMSE students showed that at any time during a Zoom meeting, around 50 percent of students were playing video games, 30 percent of students were baking sourdough bread, 10 percent of students were talking to therapists, seven percent of students were online shopping, and a measly three percent of students were actually paying attention. Not even the teachers were surprised by those results.

The outcome of using Minecraft would obviously be better. Aside from being colorful and vibrant, it would engage students to be more active by creating a three-dimensional space that they could move around in. Teachers could start worlds, building and conducting schools within these worlds through a more interactive platform. They could take field trips to the End or go diving in lava lakes (sure, they’d die, but it’d teach the students a very important lesson in mortality). Students could be instructed to build models out of whatever material they liked (be it diamond, TNT, or monster-spawning cages) to describe the concepts they were teaching. On top of all of that, instead of playing video games behind the teachers’ backs, students could play them outright!

In an experiment conducted during virtual school, several Earth Science classes were held on Zoom, while others were held on Minecraft. As expected, the Zoom classes were completely monotonous. The students acted typically, with most of them playing Minecraft anyway. In comparison, the Minecraft kids were so invested in learning that some even stayed after class! Of course, there were difficulties at first, as there were with Zoom and Google Meets. The schools that the teachers built were quickly mined to the ground, and some teachers would find themselves suddenly flung in the air by fishing rods. A couple of times, the teachers accidentally made their worlds in survival mode, which led to sudden stampedes when the monsters came out. One teacher found themselves teaching a group of random villagers and only realized they weren’t students when nothing had been built for the past 20 minutes. But after getting accustomed to the game, the teachers found their students much more engaged, and the students found—to their horror—that they were actually learning.

In the end, the Minecraft students averaged 64 points higher on the Earth Science Regents than the Zoom students. The Minecraft kids might have used an excess of Minecraft analogies on the Regents and congratulated each other by punching each other in the face, but ultimately they learned more and were happier with their learning experience.

If this experiment shows anything, it is that Minecraft is not just a game; it is a way of life. For that reason, it should clearly be incorporated into schooling today. Projects and homework could both be conducted through Minecraft. Sure, the teachers might once again find themselves lost in a world of foreign technology, but who cares about that? Minecraft would definitely make school a more interesting place.