Do Minecraft lessons, an edible garden, and diploma iPads make this the greatest school in Japan?

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Education is always one of the number one topics of conversation among citizens. People want to know that their child is given the best education that they can get, and they will pick up and move to a new neighborhood just so their kids can be in a better school.

But just how do you determine what the best school is? A strong case can be made for Aiwa Elementary School in Tokyo as the best elementary school in all of Japan, and we are going to give you three reasons why: Minecraft, edible gardens, and iPads.

Thinking back on our own elementary school days, we probably believed that our school was pretty great, full of awesome teachers, life lessons, and unforgettable experiences. Despite that, if we had the chance to do it all over again, we are willing to bet many would choose to go to Aiwa Elementary School instead.

aiwa sho 4 YouTube/yukieiga

To start with, Aiwa Elementary made the news recently when the school announced they were implementing an education program that featured the game Minecraft. The school stated that students develop skills in math, social studies, drawing, and manual arts through playing the game, which help prepare them with skills for a 21st century world. In Minecraft, players are able to break down their surroundings into more basic parts and then combine them together to create more things. It’s a deceptively simple game that allows players a huge amount of creative space to accomplish anything they want. The game is open-ended so the user determines how they want to play. That’s a simplified description of the game, but you can already see how a school would value Minecraft as a teaching tool.

▼ Designed by teachers, for teachers, so get your copy today!

aiwa sho 5 MinecraftEDU

Besides this incredibly cool Minecraft class, Aiwa also has a school-wide project to grow an edible garden on their campus. By sharing responsibilities for growing the food, the school aims to teach the students about vegetable cultivation, nutrition and food systems, living systems, nutrient cycles, and developing a sense of place. Each grade helps out, and then also partakes in a cooking class where the students get to prepare the food they grew and share in the bountiful harvest.

aiwa sho 3 YouTube/yukieiga

All of this sounds pretty cool, but for the next reason alone, you might consider moving your family to Tama City and enrolling your children at Aiwa Elementary: graduating students in 2015 got an iPad for a diploma!

aiwa sho 2 YouTube/面白法人カヤック

The tablet was loaded with pictures from school events over their time at the school along with personalized student data and yearbook photos of all their classmates and teachers. Students also wrote time-locked messages to themselves that can only be opened three, six and twelve years later. To top it all off, the back of the iPad was lovingly engraved to look like a graduation certificate. Imagine walking across the stage and your principal handing you one of these bad boys.

▼ Good luck in middle school! Here’s your diploma.

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For these three reasons alone, we can safely declare Aiwa Elementary School one of the best schools in the entire country. If only we could rewind our own lives so that we were students right now and enroll ourselves there! Instead, we’ll just have to fire up Minecraft on our laptops, munch on a salad, an pull out our iPads in order to pretend we are students there.

Sources: My Game News Flash, Kayac, The Edible Schoolyard Project
Top Image: YouTube/EduElfie

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Do Minecraft lessons, an edible garden, and diploma iPads make this the greatest school in Japan?

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