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Better Than Minecraft? Maybe Not, But Roblox Is A Nice Alternative | Tech Tools Daily # 209

Minecraft is awesome, popular, reasonably priced and great for education. Roblox, a game in the Minecraft genre may also be, or become, all those things. Frankly, I am a little embarrassed that I had not heard of this before. Thankfully a grade four student told me about it.

Roblox is aimed at the 12 and under market, but can be used by older students as well. It has a safe chat feature for students under 13 and parents are able to have a shared login to keep an eye on things.

Roblox lets you build a virtual world (again think Minecraft) and then share out that world to others via the marketplace.  The marketplace lets you play a ton of games for free and some are freemium games. Students spend Robux to buy things. Purchasing Robux costs money though.

The build studio is not super great looking, but does get the job done.  Students can build castles, robots, cars, aircraft carriers, whatever. It has less limits than Minecraft for design.  The game play is easy and logical. For example, I dropped a car into the world and was able to climb on it drive around, and push things. No coding required. The emphasis is on design.

Games are easily published to the site for others to share.  Or… for teachers to assess?  A link is given at the end of the upload for easy, peasy sharing.

Concerns

As with Minecraft, there is always a concern when younger people are able to interact with others online. Personally I don’t worry about this as much as most bad guys really come from within the family or friendship circles, but a parent might not like what another player is saying or the types of games students can play or be encouraged to build.

Sample Uses

Do I Plan to Use It?

I really want to use this next year as part of our design center we are developing.  So many great tools to use.

Commitment and Learning Curve

Medium learning curve. You will get better as you go and students will be quick to figure out how to develop things. Their motivation is very high.

Best for ES MS or HS?

ES and MS

Cost

Paid and free options

Website Link

Roblox.com