Minecraft At School

Computer games played in a classroom. It may not be a new revelation, but encouraging students to learn through games is. Rather than teachers trying to prevent students playing online games instead of the work they are supposed to be doing on computers in class, some schools are now introducing games into their classroom, playing and learning with Minecraft at School.

If you (or your children) have played Minecraft at home on a PC then you've probably heard talk of 'mods', these are modifications to the main game to change it in some way, it could be changing one tiny thing, or something that changes the game completely or adds new rules. There's a special version of Minecraft for education called MinecraftEDU, it's like a 'mod' to make Minecraft easier to use in the classroom, it's been created by a group called Teacher Gaming.

MinecraftEDU

If you're going to use Minecraft at school, then MinecraftEDU is certainly worth a look. It's built specifically for schools with features that are known to be useful, simple to setup and can be up to 50% off the full price.

Features included are:

• World Settings
  Enable/Disable different elements of the game. Including Weather Effects, Day and Night Cycle, Fire and Dynamite, Animals, Monsters, and Villagers.
• Player Settings
  Enable/Disable different player settings. Including PVP(Player vs Player), Freeze Students, Mute students, and Students can Build.
• Individual Player Settings
  Place controls on a single player, perhaps if they are misbehaving. Including Teleport students, Freeze/mute users, Change Gamemode, and Use Build Tools.
• Assignments
  Students can be set assignments and the teacher can see when they've been completed.
• Give
  Give items or blocks to all players or an individual player.
• Teleport
  Teleport to any of the teleport stations that have been setup in your world.
• Build Tools
  Access to tools that allow you to build the world faster. Including Build Mode (more precise movement and walk through solid blocks), Long Distance Building, Custom Dig/Place Amounts, and Undo Options.

There's loads of teaching with Minecraft at School information available in the teaching section of the MinecraftEDU website. Minecraft can be used to teach loads of different subjects, English, Maths, Science, Computing, Minecraft at school can be used to effectively enhance student learning. There's also an Minecraft at school Google Group (Forum) where teachers post different information about how they've used Minecraft at school, or how they need help.

Other Resources

A Minecraft world has been created by Ordnance Survey using their data and is available to explore. It can be downloaded here.

There's a video flyover of the world travelling the Thames river to give you an idea of what the world would be like.

You can even use Minecraft to explore a different country, Denmark have had their whole country re-created in a Minecraft world which you could potentially use in your school. You can read more about it on the BBC news website, and download the map file here.

Further Reading

Featured Educator Blog Post - MinecraftEDU

Minecraft Re-Writes the Playbook