Video games are often disparaged as a waste of time, but students at Northeastern State University’s IDEA Summer Youth Academy are showing how games like Minecraft can inspire problem-solving skills and unleash creativity.
The Advanced Minecraft camp was filled with clamoring students Thursday, when they continued to build a virtual world and practice survival skills. In the university’s basic Minecraft camp, students are charged with mimicking an image instructors give to them, but in the advanced version, Administrator Tabitha McIntyre said that’s taken a step further.
“Now, they have to make things like kingdoms, and run things and do battle royals,” she said. “They get to be the creator instead of just the visitor. So it’s like creating a video game inside of a video game.”
One of the challenges for students this summer was to create something with a NASA theme. Students recreated the planted Mars with affixed launch pads, among other space-related items.
“The last challenge we did this morning was, we had to make a functioning village with an economy,” said Max Barnett, a Leadership camper who helps younger students navigate the world of Minecraft. “We had emeralds serve as currency and there was land being sold.”
Most of the campers had previous knowledge of how Minecraft works, as it’s quickly become one of the most popular games of their generation. The game has amassed 140 million active players worldwide, according to Statista.com. It’s also something the kids could be doing at home, but the Summer Youth Academy setting provides them with a chance to interact with other students, grow social skills, and learn to work together.
“It’s fun to play with friends you don’t see very often, and it’s kind of fun to meet new people,” Barnett said. “I like to teach other kids about programming. I kind of plan on doing something in programming, maybe as a future job.”
Some of the students have been visiting the NSU academies for years, while others are still new to the camps. For Aiden Merrill, it’s his seventh go-round at the camp, and he enjoys being able to help out the teachers in his capacity as Leadership camper.
“I’ve really liked this place, and my great-grandpa actually has history here,” he said. “He used to be a dean and he taught classes here until 2015. So I’ve always liked to be here, and everyone is so nice.”
The students get to socialize and play a game they’d like to be playing if they were stuck at home for the summer. But there’s a lot more to it than that, Aiden said.
“For Minecraft especially, it’s kind of like engineering, in it’s own way. You can make stuff out of red stone, you can make automatic doors, you can make fire cannons,” he said. “You can make a lot of stuff and learn how to build things, too. Kids have a good imagination so they like to build what’s in their imagination. That’s also why Minecraft is so popular. And in survival mode, they can learn how to be responsible and get things for themselves, and not die from things trying to attack them.”
