Welcome back to another TESOL games and learning blog post. As a new school year starts in many parts of the world, it’s a great time to take a look at Minecraft.

Perhaps most everyone has heard of Minecraft at this point. The gaming juggernaut has sold more than 176 million copies by mid-2019, making it one of the most successful games of all time. At its core, Minecraft is digital Lego—a pixelated world of blocks that players can use to mine resources, build structures, and equip themselves with resources for adventure. Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has become a darling of education, and many believe its popularity among educators is what prompted Microsoft to pay US$2.5 billion for the game and its creator Mojang in 2014. After the purchase, Microsoft reached out to teachers to figure out just what they were doing with the game.

What makes the game popular among educators? Minecraft’s open world nature and lack of in-game tutorials position it is an “object to think with” (Papert, 1980, p. 23) that rewards trial and error. It’s a sandbox-style game meaning there are no set goals or objectives. In many respects, Minecraft is more of a toy than a game; the user can apply their own rules and goals to it. The openness of the game allows teachers to use it any way they see fit as well. Teachers have used it for language learning, creative writing, and world history.

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