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Ricks Radical Academy
Eric Huang, Katie Miller, and Jacob Wilson - 8th grade
Drakes Creek Middle School
Minecraft
“Radically Changing Education”
Schools are a keystone piece of communities across Kentucky and the world.
According to the Governor of Kentucky, “Prioritizing our public schools, teachers and students is the single best investment we can make to build a better, brighter future for our families.” Our build is somewhat based off of our local university, WKU. As we built, it morphed into its own school.
Main School
One of the first things we did was flatten a series of hills using commands. We then used a program called Gamemaker Studio 2 to create our school's blueprints before we built it in Minecraft. After we created the blueprint, we began building the base and the walls of the main building.
We decorated the inside of our school, built a giant clock (inspired by WKU’s clock) in the center of our school and then we built a dorm center in the back.
Inside the main school there are all the usual classes offered at a traditional school from English to math to science. In the main school, there are also recreational parts of the building like a band room and library. We also built an indoor garden that will be used as a learning opportunity for students who wish to learn more about herbology.
Recreational Areas
In the school, there are many recreational areas including an indoor garden, a library, and a band room. We felt like the band room was the most difficult part to build as there were many items like the instruments and music stands to include. One challenge we faced was figuring out how to build these items without them being too big for the scale of the room. We also had to figure out which tools looked like instruments the most so we could display them.
The library was also quite difficult as we had to use the space for the books wisely while also making sure there was enough space for people to walk around. Lastly, we built an indoor garden. The most challenging thing about the garden was the amount of space we had available in the room. The room is quite small so we had to use trial and error to see what would work best in the room.
Indoor Farm
Inside our school, we decided to add an indoor garden. When building the indoor farm, we looked at the article, Let it Grow. We designed the garden to have grow lights built into the roof for the plants to grow through photosynthesis as well as storage for seeds and crops. We wanted to include an indoor farm as this gives students an opportunity to learn about herbology and where food comes from. There are many ways to incorporate an indoor farm as a learning experience. From the Let it Grow article, “Students can make predictions and conduct experiments in the garden during science, plot out the dimensions of the garden in math, or learn about the history and politics of food access in social studies, for example. The crops we grow are used to help feed the students for a fresher, more organic food source. “School gardens provide students with a real-time look at how food is grown,” Let it Grow.
Challenges we Faced
One problem we encountered was that we built the dorms one block too long so we had to adjust that to the correct length. We also flooded the kitchen whilst making a sink so we had to use structure voids (which you can get with commands) to stop the flooding.
We also had a problem getting the right painting block. At first, when we were trying to get the painting blocks in place, we didn’t realize that we made the area too small. Then when we fixed the borders surrounding the painting, it took about 20-30 tries to get the painting we were looking for.
Our biggest challenge was organizing the time for our whole group to work together. We all had schedules with things happening at different times and it took a while for all of us to find a time that would work well.
Resources:
Click HERE to View our Minecraft School
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