Rebuilding an Empire with Minecraft: Bringing the Classics into the Digital Space

This article presents an innovative manner to supplement history and foreign language classes with a 3D modeling of ancient Rome by the widely played video game Minecraft. Assuming the persona of an ancient architect, students select a building, research it in primary and secondary sources and recreate it in its original Roman location. Here I discuss the benefits of using 3D software as a learning tool and the theory and methodology behind the implementation used with my Latin I–IV students, ages 13–18. I also analyze the data resulting from two iterations and offer further suggestions for implementation.