Coding with Variables in Minecraft

Published by Mike Neumire on 7/19/2024

New York State's Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards contain many standards that are ultimately valuable to students but may be intimidating for teachers to attempt not only to understand, but to fold into their own curriculum and instruction in ways that honor the standard without diminishing their content. This is no easy feat, which leaves most of these standards without homes. 

A different way to approach the integration of these standards would be through the lens of the projects we ask students to complete in order to demonstrate their learning. Projects don't have to be lesson-specific- they can be more like a recurring option as part of your classroom system. For example, you may complete a lesson about aspects of the Great Depression, and then allow students to choose a project to demonstrate what they learned. That project might be making an explainer video on Canva, or a quick game on Gimkit Creative, or a simulation on Minecraft. Then it is on the student to pitch their choice to you and how it will connect to the lesson. With this structure, we can start to look at the available projects and how they might meet CSDF standards, instead of trying to connect the standards directly to the Great Depression. Let's look at the simulation in Minecraft, for example. Perhaps a student wants to create a city scene in which citizens are waiting in line at soup kitchens. It could take a long time to build that scene, block by block. But with some intentional coding, that scene can come together much more quickly. Check out the video below to see how we could meet standards on variables while building a town in minutes.