November

MinecraftEdu

MinecrafEdu is an education-centric version of the original Minecraft game developed by Mojang. MinecraftEdu offers many education-centric tools for teachers to provide a safe, engaging, and educational gaming experience. As students read The Giver in ELA, students will deepen their understanding of the themes presented throughout the book through building in MincraftEdu. This project will give students an opportunity to build the world presented in the book using specific information from the text.

Before students begin The Giver project, they are taking time to learn the ins and out of MinecraftEdu. All students have are requires to complete the following zones:

Zone 1: The Basics

Move the player character and navigate in the world.

Zone 2: Obstacle Course

Demonstrate competency with basic movement controls.

Zone 3: The Brickyard

Explore the world and find the way out.

Zone 4: Digging and Building

Collect blocks and place blocks to create a simple structure.

Zone 5: Shapes

Demonstrate competency at building and learn about different types of building materials and tools.

Zone 6: The Campground

Practice what you’ve learned through the tutorial.

The first five zones all have very clear objectives. Things get interesting once all students arrive in the campgrounds are given freedom to explore and build. There is no structure in place and it's up to them to decide how they'd like to proceed. As they make decisions, certain aspects of the world will change (day/night cycle, weather, starvation, etc). Generally speaking, most students will go off and build a house with friends and start the foundation a “society.”

It's interesting to see that when given no set objectives, students generally want to create a structure that feels familiar to them. This is going to come into play when we discuss dystopian vs. utopian societies in relation to The Giver. One student moved far away from other students and built a few structures along with a list of rules:

This week, students will learn how to document their progress using a book and quill in Minecraft. They will also learn how to program turtles in ComputerCraft. These turtles can be programmed with the Lua programming language to help students build structures.