Students and teachers across Australia are engaging with a new approach to teaching earth sciences using gamification.

Two new games, supported by Newcrest and other resource companies and developed by CoRE Learning, are being used in classrooms to teach students about sustainability and careers in Australia's modern mining industry. CoRE’s gamification is cross-curricular, interdisciplinary and vertical, meaning they can be used across multiple years and subjects.

This approach uses something kids already love – video games – to present curriculum-consistent content in a new and exciting way, with 58 classes already active in playing the games.

Resource, Respond, Rescue is a Minecraft game located in a fictitious town in Northern Australia, with gameplay describing the operation's Emergency Response Teams collaborating with the town's SES volunteers as they engage in mitigation, response and rescue activities to protect the community and a mine from the effects of bushfire, flood, earthquake and tsunami.

The Minecraft game Old as Dirt shows students how people who work on mine sites within the diversity of careers available to them, also have the capacity to be an ERT specialist, volunteering their time and expertise to acquire additional training to help mitigate against and save individuals, communities, workers and the environment in response to natural phenomena.

Watch how teachers and students are using this innovative approach here.