Minecraft Nottingham, Nottingham University & PVA

7 Mar 2024

Park Vale Academy students are participating in The Minecraft Nottingham research project. It is a perfect example of how Digital Nottingham is seeking to engage with young people; gaining valuable insights into how they see their city and contributing to the development of their digital skills.

For the uninitiated, Minecraft is an online 3D computer game – in fact, it is the best-selling video game in history, with over 238 million copies sold – in which players can build pretty much anything. The game involves building blocks and creating structures across different environments and terrains. Described by many as “online Lego”, the game forgoes physical bricks and blocks for virtual, computer-generated materials. This all happens in a virtual world where players are encouraged to gather resources, craft items, and plan and build structures.

Professor Ainsworth continued: “This project will be a fantastic window into the imagination of young people. It would also support primary and secondary education curriculum objectives in novel ways, for example in Geography, or Data Science, all the while building digital skills which will aid them in their future studies and careers.”

Whilst the project is still in relative infancy, a number of activities are being considered for the future, including:

• Children learning about their city through ordnance survey maps and then teleporting around within Minecraft to visit the main sites.
• Creation of location-based games where they visit the campus in Minecraft and in real-life whilst wearing trackers to map their exploration of the real and virtual spaces.
• Encouraging participants to use these experiences to become ‘community leaders’ engaging with their families and their wider community to incorporate needs, wants and sustainable priorities, which could then be expressed as Minecraft builds in their own right.​​​​​​​