I teach programming at the middle school level and am planning a Minecraft event and some pilot classroom activities around it. As I've researched what the who

I teach programming at the middle school level and am planning a Minecraft event and some pilot classroom activities around it. As I've researched what the whole Minecraft in the classroom thing is about, I've found a few ways it is being used, but they all boil down to making the learning experience more engaging to more students. Make it fun and the students will tear off and learn more better faster. Some activities very directly support the curriculum, for example teachers who have made activities where concepts from quantum mechanics, newtonian physics, and life sciences have made working models in the Minecraft world where students can experiment and more directly experience the details behind these concepts. Some are just virtual worlds where you can be a virtual tourist and learn about a place or time in history. There is one where you explore Boston during the time of the Boston Tea Party for example, and you have to talk to all of the NPC characters to learn facts you will be tested on later. Some are very computer-science focused where students make their own mods or just use scripting languages to automate structure creation on a larger scale. All of these could be taught using more traditional methods. For some learners, just telling them to read a book will be the highest throughput/most effective learning method. Those kids are going to do fine regardless. These new gamified virtual world methods of introducing the material may slow things down for the learners we historically see as highly capable learners, but they promise to engage and light a fire inside some of the other students who otherwise might get left behind. How much you should or can tailor the experience for each audience is a challenge I face all the time. It isn't easy as every decision seems to involve improving the experience for one segment of the class, usually at the expense of another.