Why Minecraft and Roblox Are on the Fall Syllabus

When Ruth C. Kinney Elementary in Islip Terrace, N.Y., went into lockdown in March, librarian Bianca Rivera feared she wouldn’t be able to connect with students who’d typically come in for activities. But she soon thought of a place where she might find them: the virtual worlds of Roblox, a website where kids chat, play games, and learn new skills. Several times a week, Rivera and dozens of 8- to 11-year-olds logged on to play games such as Piggy But It’s 100 Players (the point is to fend off a petulant porker) and Adopt Me! (they care for virtual pets). Rivera fretted that parents would rebel against yet more time spent online, but they were grateful, and this fall she’s planning to use Roblox to teach animation. “It was a way to talk to the kids,” she says. “It just helped us connect and stay together.”

With the pandemic continuing to rage and many schools likely to remain closed or operate on reduced schedules, more teachers are turning to Roblox and Minecraft, a rival offering from Microsoft Corp. Yes, they’re computer games, but they’re also serious learning tools, teachers and education theorists say. Roblox offers millions of games, some designed to surreptitiously teach the three R’s. In Minecraft, players construct and explore virtual worlds out of blocks that look something like Legos. Within those environments, they can engage in more than 600 learning sessions, with activities such as visiting a low-def version of Florence, Italy; hanging out in a “decimal/fraction garden”; or honing language skills while exploring a shipwreck. “Being able to connect a classroom of 20 to 25 students remotely—gaming works really well,” says Deirdre Quarnstrom, the Microsoft executive who oversees a school-focused edition of Minecraft, which lets teachers limit who’s playing and what the kids do.