How did we get hooked into Minecraft?

Our journey with Minecraft at Mokoia Intermediate has only been brief, but we are certainly heading towards bigger things.

We began with only a Minecraft club which wasn't very big and ran one lunchtime a week last year. As Minecraft became more of a phenomenon so did the eagerness to join. Lunchtime became lunchtimes and a few students become too many for the limited server space we had.

Our DP then decided to dedicate the spare server we had to being a Minecraft server (this stopped a lot of the lagging and crashing of the game), this server allows for 60 people to be on at one time. At the beginning of this year our school introduced an arts block. During this block each teacher is allowed to choose their own specific focus within the arts curriculum and run this every Friday. Arts block was a huge success and Minecraft was definitely one of the more popular options. When we ran it again this term we got a shock, 86 children wanted to join up (this is huge when our roll is a little under 300). Unfortunately with only 60 spots we have had to have a waiting list. Instead of one teacher taking this it is now two of us.

Running Minecraft with 60 students (mostly boys) would sound like a nightmare to some, however it completely runs itself. Students who are experts become the teachers and the students who are beginners want to learn from other students. As a teacher I just ensure everyone is safe and happy.

As I learn more and more about what you can do in Minecraft I am beginning to set up challenges and goals for the students to build or inquire about. The learning in this game is mind boggling to me. How can a game with such poor graphics provide so much creativity?

I am loving that with the help of my students I am becoming an expert and I am thinking of new ones to embed it into our curriculum.

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Next term our literacy focus is poetry. Below is a video of students reading a poem and recreating the poem within Minecraft. What a fantastic idea.




Another video I stumbled across (mentioned in a post below) was a time lapse video of a community of people collaborating to build an amazing city. As a class we watched this and discussed the idea of collaborating to build an ancient civilization (which is our social studies focus next term), I then took this idea next door to the Year 8 digital teacher who immediately wanted to jump on board. We as two classes are going to use Google Docs (for the planning) and minecraft to construct an ancient civilization . We are going to trial this as being student led and facilitate when necessary. Very exciting!!