Minecraft supports equitable STEM education for Florida schools

Most students love going on field trips and in Duval County Schools of Jacksonville, Florida, it's no different—but for these students, it’s particularly exciting to get on the bus to go on a special journey to the Minecraft Lab because they get to learn with a game they love to play. Classes from across the district travel to the Minecraft Lab for fun lessons taught by educators trained in Minecraft: Education Edition, a game-based learning platform that supports 

“My students were blown away with the experience at Minecraft lab. They had small experiences with Minecraft, but after that, they felt fully immersed,” Gladys Barrington, a teacher at Biscayne Elementary Leadership Academy.

But more than that, the Minecraft Lab is also an innovative solution to a complex problem: educators know how important STEM education is for their learners, but often aren’t given practical guidance for incorporating STEM into their classrooms or feel daunted by the idea of teaching Computer Science.

And that’s where Duval County School District’s Minecraft Lab is playing a huge role in driving student-led learning and better educational outcomes. How? It’s helping children get the skills they need for success in the 21^st century—and it’s giving teachers the guidance and training to build those skills in their classrooms. 

Giving students and teachers a crash course in Minecraft

Duval County Public Schools—which serves nearly 130,000 students across 196 schools—is in a county with a poverty rate that’s higher than the national mean and a wide variety of ethnicities and backgrounds. The district has invested in technology access by ensuring that every school has high-speed internet, wireless access, and a 1:1 device to student ratio. It then expanded to give teachers basic instructional tools using Microsoft 365, both as part of its in-person Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) program and a variety of remote tools delivered through Microsoft Teams. 

The district had already started using Minecraft: Education Edition, which was freely available to all teachers and students. While everyone had accounts, the district wasn’t seeing a lot of utilization. The reason was simple: teachers didn’t know how to incorporate Minecraft into their classroom and curricula. That’s when a group of educators and district leaders hit on a great idea.

“We started putting together the Minecraft Lab, thinking we could bring in two classes at a time from an elementary school and set it up as a one-day field trip,” says Jim Culbert, Chief Information Officer for Duval County Schools. “Then we would bring both the students and the teachers into this wonderful lab, and then let them leave out of here with the knowledge of how to code using Minecraft.”

The Minecraft Lab was envisioned and put into action by Nadine Ebri and Allison McGrath, both of whom are District Specialists within Duval County Public School’s Technology and Innovation Department. Today they also function as the head Minecraft Lab teachers, overseeing the labs while also creating activities and training materials, often using pre-built lessons and immersive worlds available in the game.

First, teachers book a session in the 36-computer lab located in a centrally located elementary school. They choose a lesson plan created by Ebri and McGrath, such as English, Math, or Science. And while their students are actively participating in learning the basics of Minecraft, teachers participate alongside their students, discovering how to teach with game-based learning and access pre-built lessons and immersive worlds. At the end, teachers are given additional training materials and ideas for how to integrate Minecraft into their classroom. It’s a win-win: students love the meaningful, fun learning that happens in Minecraft and the opportunity to bring their gaming skills into the classroom, and teachers are empowered to expand the use of Minecraft in their lesson plans.

Making Minecraft and STEM accessible to all students

The district has become passionate about game-based learning because it provides opportunities to students with different needs. For example, McGrath recounts an incident with a non-verbal student in one of her lab sessions.  “He was pointing to the screen and showing me what he was building within the game,” she says. “The teacher said that was the most excited and engaged he had been all year in any learning environment.”

Whether it’s kids who need special education or have behavioral problems, the ability to provide a fun and immersive learning environment gets them engaged and active in driving their own educational opportunities. “I love when they come in here because it really helps them to thrive in a different environment where they can demonstrate learning,” says Ebri.

Duval County Public Schools prides itself on providing fair and equitable educational opportunities to all. This is an issue dear to Principal McBride; Biscayne Elementary Leadership Academy is a school with 100 percent free and reduced lunch. “The lab actually does give access to technology they wouldn't necessarily have at home,” he says. “That's one reason that I'm so excited about Minecraft and technology in general for our students, because it's not an area where our students who are predominantly African American typically have access to.”

Culbert is quick to add that one of the goals of the program is to demonstrate to all students—including the underprivileged that they can code. “We really want to entrench into these programs for disadvantaged students that just don’t think that they could possibly become an IT programmer—yes, you can!” he says.

Expanding future career opportunities

The world is trending toward more technology, and innovative educators know that preparing students for a rapidly changing workplace is key to their success. “We want to make sure that when our students leave the elementary level, they have those skills,” says Sanaa McBride, the principal for Biscayne Elementary Leadership Academy, “so when they move out into the world, they can be change agents and create more technology that we can use.”

The Duval County School District is actively preparing its students for the future—and in today’s world, that means the burgeoning number of tech jobs. “Right now, in Jacksonville, we have about 6,000 unfilled IT jobs,” says Culbert. “As we build more tech, and more and more tech comes here to Jacksonville, we need more people that are interested in it and going into the technology field.”

Getting girls into STEM is also a focus. “I’m really big on girls who code,” says Barrington. “This could be a career for many of my students. Even today, one of my students expressed how she wants to be a Minecraft teacher. That’s a whole different mindset. We’re driving a majority of girls to merge into technology departments because it’s mainly a guy’s world. But we’re ready to take over!”

Moving into the future

The lab’s popularity has been driven by both student and teacher excitement about the possibilities. It is common for teachers to return to their schools after a Minecraft lab field trip and inspire several more colleagues to sign up for field trips and training. “We hear a lot of follow up stories with teachers who continue to use Minecraft in their classrooms,” says Ebri. “Sometimes, they'll access or send over materials like PowerPoints that we use in here, or different worlds that we already modified to meet the needs of their students.”

The district is also offering its own professional development opportunities to meet this demand and building a second lab to extend its reach and merge the initiative with its Career Technical Education esports and coding program. “We’re getting many more inquiries about how to implement it into the classroom,” says Holly Lanham, Director of Technology Innovation at Duval County Public Schools. 

When it comes to Minecraft, students, administrators, and teachers are all in. The platform allows educators to reach and engage students in unprecedented ways, and spark real passion for STEM and coding.  “The Minecraft Lab is really helping students try things they never wanted to try before,” says Ebri. “If they see it within a game, they’re willing to take risks. We’re realizing students are becoming more adventurous in the game and they’re more willing to learn new things.”

As Principal McBride says, “Minecraft gives our students all those necessary skills and those skills are lifelong skills. Not only is it engaging them on the academic level, but it’s engaging them with life skills That's why it's such an intricate part of our program here.”