Studio Activities

Minecraft Education Edition Lesson Plan

Hour of Code

Complete a lesson designed to teach children about coding and AI using Minecraft Education Edition and reflect on the lesson.

I believe that the lesson plan was fairly effective in addressing the learning objectives in the lesson plan. The game was educational in terms of teaching about some basic coding concepts. I feel like some coding concepts could have been explored a little more. Some code used conditional statements but didn't really explain what those statements were doing. For teaching AI I believe that the game did a good job of explaining how training an AI works. I think something mentioning how long it takes to train an AI could be helpful, the game sort of made it seem like an instant process.

The game did a very good job of breaking down the steps necessary to solve the game's problems. Each section of the game showed a different concept (moving forward, turning, etc.) and they were easy to understand. By solving each step of the problem as you move through the game, you have all of the tools needed to complete the final goal at the end. The game was fun and easy to play, but since I have a coding background I'm not fully sure how it feels to someone without that background. I think the game is easy for anyone to understand, but I'm not sure if that's just because I've had a lot of practice with these concepts. I still had a lot of fun playing with the game, and I liked that you were able to play around with the coding interface while repopulating the area affected by the fire.

Build Your Emotion

Complete an existing challenge of your choice in Minecraft Education Edition and reflect on the challenge.

Brief description of your challenge

My challenge was to build something related to happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The challenge gave a list of words related to those emotions, and I had to choose one of those words to design my builds from.

Description of your final outcome

I chose to build houses for each emotion because that's what's most fun for me to build and customize. For each house I picked one type of block in Minecraft to make the centerpiece of each house. For fear I used the end portal, for anger I used TNT, for sadness I used ice, and for happiness I used purple glazed terracotta. Choosing an object to focus the houses on was very helpful for me to figure out which direction I wanted to go for the final build.

Overall reflection

I think that this challenge did an excellent job of getting me to think about my emotions. For each house I built I had to think about how I act and feel when each emotion takes over. While this might not be the case for everyone who does this build challenge, I took this as an opportunity to dive deeper into how each emotion makes me feel. I do think that I was benefitted by having previous experience with Minecraft. I was able to use blocks and items that people who are new probably wouldn't know about.

Fear

Anger

Neutral

Sadness

Happiness

Terrarium Build Lesson

Create a lesson in Minecraft Education Edition that teaches an educational concept (building a terrarium) and create a lesson plan to use the lesson in a classroom.

Lesson Description

This lesson walks the player through the basics of building a terrarium. They are given a jar to start with and walked step-by-step through the process of building the terrarium. The student is given the freedom to create the terrarium however they want with different materials and layers. There is a pre-built terrarium example already in the world, but the learner doesn’t have to follow the example directly. After students complete the lesson, they can create small groups to share what they made, or the whole class can take turns showing off their terrariums. From there, students can either independently create a terrarium at home, or the class can create terrariums as an assignment on a later date.

Learning Objectives

Students should be able to recall the steps to build a terrarium at home.
Students should understand the purpose of each layer of the terrarium in the system.

Guiding Ideas

The idea behind this lesson is to improve upon existing resources for learning how to make a terrarium. The student could just find a website that walks through the steps, but if they instead build it in Minecraft, they should have an easier time recalling the information. The lesson uses Minecraft Education Edition to give the learner the same creativity that would be available for them if they were building a terrarium at their home. Additionally, the lesson provides an opportunity for students to share ideas and perspectives on why they designed their terrarium the way that they did.

Student Activities

The learner will add each layer to the terrarium as they follow the steps of the lesson. After each student completes the assignment, they can either walk around the classroom and view other students’ creations, or each student can show off their terrarium to the class. Each student could make something completely different and being able to show off their terrarium after completing the lesson will hopefully create interest to create a terrarium at home. Additionally, students could create their own terrariums as a supplemental assignment in following class periods.

Performance Expectations

Students are expected to follow the instructions starting at the NPC and moving left to right. Students are free to customize each layer as they please, but each layer must appear in the terrarium in some capacity. While students are in creative mode for the assignment, they are expected to avoid using materials that are too unreasonable for a terrarium (lava, human characters, etc).

Reflections

From the beginning I knew I wanted to make a lesson plan related to a terrarium. I was hoping to get an idea of what we could do for our final game. I hope by giving the learner creative freedom with the design of their terrarium, they will be more interested in replicating it in real life. Additionally the ability to compare a student’s creation with their friends’ creations should increase interest in the lesson. The lesson is definitely something that would have interested me when I was younger, and I hope that younger learners would be interested and able to follow the lesson.

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