My Own Minecraft World

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.

Economy

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.

Animal Husbandry

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)

As Far as the Eyes can See and As Far as the Brain can Imagine

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!

Back to the Basics

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.

 

Relating Back

 

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.