Here are some builds I did for the project on a server.
It is a basic house and barn just to show you what people normally build in minecraft.
I also have a farm
A lot of planning and creativity went into this build.
I had to also collect all the materials which took a while.
Minecraft is also really social.
People work together on servers to build things together.
I bet you’re wondering why it’s called minecraft?
– Well a huge part of the game is the mining part.
– In this server, I am showing you a huge underground canyon where I have mined many materials.
– This teaches kids about minerals, iron, coal, other materials.
– Then they later smelt these materials to make other things like iron.
– It teaches them how to problem solve and follow basic processes and setting small goals to achieve a high objective.
In this server, I spawned right next to a village. In the village, there are villagers who you can trade with. This aspect of the game could be used in an Econ class to teach the students about using and saving currency.
The villagers trade items for emeralds.Here I built a sword, as we saw before, and collected wool because one of the villagers here wanted to trade some wool for an emerald.
Emeralds are basically used as currency in the game.
By collecting tons of items, you can collect more and more emeralds until you can trade for more valuable items.
There are all different kinds of creatures in Minecraft. Some villagers and monsters (as shown above), but also farm animals. Animal husbandry can be defined as the management and care of farm animals by humans for profit. In Minecraft, the player learns how to breed, manage, and maintain a farm. Some of the animals include:
Cows
Chickens
Sheep
Pigs
Horses
Dogs (Domesticated Wolves)
Cats (domesticated Ocelots)
Minecraft really is endless. Look at how this player created an entire working graphing and scientific calculator using redstone. In this sense, minecraft can even serve as a teaching aid for older students who want to be an engineer of some sort.
Creative Mode is where kids can really experiment with their creativity and innovation.
They can use this mode to really grasp an understanding of the mechanics of the game.
Some of the mechanics include:
Pressure pads
Buttons
Levers
There is a mineral that you can find deep underground called redstone.
Redstone is used as electricity in the game.
Creativity comes into place here because there isn’t really a mission here at all. You don’t have to survive, just build!
-In creative mode, you can fly over the map and basically spawn in whatever items you want.
-In this mode , it’s easy to check out all of minecraft’s biomes.
-Students can explore and check all of the different qualities of each biome.
– The biomes include: Plains, village, desert, tundra, swamp, jungle, redwood forest, mesa, ocean, deep ocean, extreme hills, taiga, roofed forest, savanna, birch forest, and more!
Basics of Minecraft
Teaches problem solving and the basic algorithms for building.
I spawned on an island 
This is how you create the basic materials
First, you need wood!
You use wood to make many basic tools like wooden planks, a crafting table, and sticks. 
Here is a crafting table which gives you more space to craft on. 
On the crafting table, I built the basic tools:
Shovel
Sword
Axe
Pickaxe
Hoe
Here is a basic minecraft house.
This is usually what everyone’s first house looks like.
Meaningful Learning
Technology is a tool to support knowledge construction, an information vehicle for exploring knowledge, as authentic context to support learning, as social medium to support language by conversing, and an intellectual partner to support learning by reflecting. Technology should be used as an engage-r and a facilitator of thinking.
MinecraftEdu does just that. MinecraftEdu utilizes all of Minecraft’s features and mechanics to help teach students. All of the information that students learn from playing the game can be applied to their lives in some way. Whether it be problem solving or collaboration, Minecraft supports knowledge construction in a way that completely engages the students into a magical 8-bit world.
Here are a few things I believe we can learn from Minecraft:
– problem solving
– basic algorithms
– communication and collaboration!
– biome characteristics
– creativity and innovation!
– engineering
– economy and the concepts of currency and trading
– planning
– following processes
– goal setting
– animal husbandry
– fuels and minerals and smelting processes
– and more!
“Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. Now you can too!”
-MinecraftEdu
MinecraftEduProject 