On our last day of 2024, the Friday before winter break, we ended each period with a Zen-like activity where students got to build a place that makes them happy in Minecraft Education. Students were already familiar with using Minecraft Education after participating in a few games during Computer Science Education Week. We started with the newest Hour of Code Minecraft Education game, the Show Must Go On, then I assigned the Corny Corn Caper, then Generation AI, then Inclusion. Friday I assigned students the middle school Cyber Security assignment, Network Heroes, to give them another way to learn about digital citizenship without needing to do any coding. I wanted students to see that there are many ways to be digitally literate without needing to become a coder or programmer.
The free build activity going after some Minecraft: Education ready-to-play games is part of my four step plan of integrating Minecraft into my Math and Science classes. It goes like this:
- Students play ready-made worlds individually.
- Students join a teacher-hosted world to build individually or in small groups.
- Head to head build competitions!
- Collaborative small team project.
A new feature that Minecraft: Education added with their recent update is the ability save worlds to the cloud by connecting your Education Microsoft account to your OneDrive! That has been so helpful for me because I was able to test out games that I wanted kids to play at home on my home computer and then have the worlds/games I tested load on my school computer and not lose any progress I already made at home. That helped me choose what games I offered kids for Hour of Code during Computer Science Education Week and it was essential as I created worlds to host for our free build activity! Here are my two free build worlds for each of my classes with a cloud icon to show it’s backed up!
What I did to setup the free build worlds was to start an infinite world game. It was the settings that were most important because I didn’t have to add much to the worlds except for the instructions below on a board and via an NPC. I made the world creative and enabled cheats but turned off any damage setting or PVP settings. I did allow fire to spread but turned off any explosives, which some kids were disappointed to hear.
Here are the instructions:
And here what the NPC character said. It was really nothing necessary, I just wanted to add an NPC. 🙂
Here are some of my students enjoying their last hour of the last day of 2024:
Here are some of their builds after an hour:
I think this student said it best with a message she left in her house:
Here is a recording I made of my kids building:
Next Step: Build Competitions!
Now that my 6th graders have had experience playing Minecraft: Education games and were able to maneuver through the game and complete the activity without switching to creative mode or turning on world builder mode, both strictly forbidden to ensure they get challenged and learn the lesson! For the first activity I always recommend that students play individual games to get them used to using Minecraft as a learning tool.
Then I make sure to host the next activity to have students all together in the multiplayer world/experience that I created for them. That way I have control of setting the access for all the students, meaning that I am the only one with full operator status while giving them full creative access. The idea is to have them be together in the virtual space and still be able to get along and collaborate while still following all classroom rules.
The next step is to have kids compete in teams using the Esports worlds for competitive building!
I will again host the world and invite two teams at a time to build side-by-side. Once they are done building I will have the rest of the class vote for the best build. I needed an idea for this year that could fit our Science theme of energy and energy transfers so I went to ChatGPT and create the following instructions:
The esports build battles will give students an exciting way to practice building together cooperatively. That will lead us to the final Minecraft activity of the year, which will be the Peace With Nature Challenge from 2021, which is a great match for our spring Environmental Stewardship Project. I had students do that in 2021 when it first came out and it was great so we’re going to do it again this year. By the time students reach this stage in their use of Minecraft, one student in each small team will host a world and invite their teammates to work together and build.
- Students play ready-made worlds individually.
- Students join a teacher-hosted world to build individually or in small groups.
- Head to head build competitions!
- Collaborative small team project.
