Ukrainian teacher Liubov Filatova doesn’t need any special equipment to help her students do chemical experiments, visualize the structure of atoms, or even explore space.
She also doesn’t need to be around them during class.
Filatova, 30, uses game-based platform Minecraft: Education Edition to teach children the basics of programming, mathematics, chemistry and more, helping them to explore the environment while playing the computer game.
“It combines studying with fun games and quests, making the whole process of education more attractive for children,” Filatova told the Kyiv Post.
Minecraft: Education Edition is an educational version of the world-renowned computer game Minecraft designed by the Swedish game studio Mojang.
It aims at helping schoolchildren learn and increase their creativity and problem-solving skills.
The game provides its users with hundreds of online lessons on various subjects, along with books, tutorials, the ability to explore the surrounding world and create new objects. It allows children to collaborate with their classmates and study together online, under their teacher’s control.
“Children learn a lot while playing,” Filatova says.
But while Minecraft is already a regular educational tool in Sweden and other European countries, Ukraine is only at the beginning of its path toward using innovative tools for education at schools.
And in the wake of the coronavirus, after the country shut down all schools to slow the spread of COVID-19, having proper tools for online education has become more important for Ukraine.
“All children love to play, and even during the quarantine they have to continue studying,” Filatova says. “Minecraft can become a great solution for kids all over Ukraine to combine online education and fun.”
Swedish gaming success
Designed by Stockholm-based Mojang, Minecraft stirred up the global gaming industry in 2009. It soon became one of the most popular computer games in the world and the company’s best-selling product.
Game fans from all around the globe began to praise Sweden for creating Minecraft.
“The game has become very popular and has been spreading throughout the world extremely fast,” says Nina Kutuzova, coordinator of educational programs at Microsoft Ukraine.
U.S. tech giant Microsoft acquired Mojang in 2014. But the acquisition hasn’t changed much about Mojang, the company’s website says.
Two years later, the new Minecraft: Education Edition appeared and became popular among teachers and students right away. One year later, in 2017, the game entered the Ukrainian market.
“It was a sensation at that time,” says Filatova.
According to the Ukrainian teacher, the success of the educational version of Minecraft is based on the idea behind the program — to help children do what they love and study at the same time.
“Minecraft is the whole world where children feel comfortable and have no limits for their actions,” Filatova says.
The educational version of Minecraft, however, is available only for schools and educational institutions, which need to purchase a special license for the game from Microsoft.
Currently, the game’s educational edition is used in 115 countries, including Ukraine. Over 35 million teachers and students use the program worldwide.
Filatova, who works at the STEM school Inventor — a chain of schools that promotes innovation in education and was among the first in Ukraine to use Minecraft for educational purposes — says that Minecraft is only an instrument for studying.
“Minecraft is not the (sole) purpose of our classes, but rather a useful tool,” Filatova says.
Kids pose for a photograph after the Minecraft championship in Kyiv in 2019. (NGO "Innovative Educational Solutions")
How it works
Although Filatova says that many people in Ukraine are still uncomfortable with the idea of using Minecraft for education, she believes more schools will start using it as a teaching tool soon.
“People are always afraid of something they don’t know. When they don’t understand how Minecraft works, they can’t understand its benefits,” she says.
According to her, Minecraft gives children practical knowledge and helps to prepare them for the future.
It works as an open-world game and can be used as a canvas for learning and creativity. With the help of Minecraft, kids can learn history, literature, languages, biology and much more, not to mention mathematics, physics and chemistry.
When studying history, for instance, it allows children to explore historical sites or try to recreate them. The same applies to literature. Children can also explore or recreate events from textbooks.
Kids can study the structure of plants and flowers, molecules and atoms, along with architecture and art. They can study different geometric shapes and how colors combine. Teachers can create their own lessons and quests, or use the existing ones from the Minecraft library.
“There are no limits,” Filatova says.
The educational edition of Minecraft allows children to master technical skills and obtain computer literacy even at a very young age. They learn how to build 3D objects using different codes, communicate while having group tasks and acquire leadership skills.
It also has two companion applications, a Code Connection for programming in Minecraft and Classroom Mode for teachers to control the learning process.
Here lies the main difference between Minecraft for education and the initial game — in the educational version, teachers can control students’ actions, give them tasks and check their work.
The Classroom Mode is also essential when it comes to remote education — an important issue during the quarantine.
Due to the quarantine, Microsoft made Minecraft available for free until July 2020 to help teachers and students stay connected to the classroom.
Filatova says that, at this time, they had students not only from various parts of Ukraine, but also from several European countries.
“Just like the real classes, only inside the Minecraft world,” Filatova says.
Following kids
Inventor has been using Minecraft for education since 2018.
The school network has two areas of work: It operates as a primary school where basic lessons are taught with such innovative tools as Minecraft and Lego, and as a STEM school that offers Minecraft courses on exploring the environment and programming. Inventor school also takes part in Minecraft championships among children.
Filatova says that Inventor decided to “follow the children’s needs and interests” when creating the educational programs for their schools.
But even with such innovative methods of education, it’s impossible to skip such basic things as theoretical knowledge and homework.
Filatova says each lesson starts with a teacher’s explanation of the material. After studying theories, children have to preserve the knowledge in Minecraft by doing different tasks, solving problems and using their creativity.
According to her, even kids who have never played Minecraft before can become successful when studying with it.
“Kids should enjoy the whole process of education,” Filatova says.
“When we use Minecraft… during classes, they don’t want to stop the process,” Filatova says.
Ukrainian Ignat Khlebnikov says that, for kids, the difference between playing and studying is blurry. Therefore, he decided to send his child to an Inventor school, to help her open up and get to know modern technologies.
“While playing, kids do not leave their comfort zone and it’s great,” Khlebnikov says. “They are like small creators in Minecraft, and in that world they are responsible for what they do.”
Khlebnikov’s daughter, eight-year-old Elizaveta Khlebnikova, says she enjoys programming with Minecraft.
“I love what we do at school,” Khlebnikova says. “Studying with Minecraft is never boring.”
