Tutorial World
Like we do in every class, we started off in the tutorial world. The span between students who have played Minecraft and those who have never played Minecraft seems to be wider in the 8th grade then either other grade. I'm guessing, that if you haven't tried Minecraft by age 13 or 14, then you really don't have any interest and aren't likely to. This is the only year I will be able to notice differences like this, because starting next year both the 7th and 8th grade classes will be in their second year of Minecraft. That's fabulous, and blows my mind! I had some 8th grade students who needed over two days to get past the first obstacle course area. By the end of day three, I had about 90% of the students in the campground areas and beyond, and I was able to turn on student building.
Sustainable Community Unit
This unit grew out of talking to the 8th grade science teacher about what content she is covering this trimester. A new addition to her curriculum is renewable energy. I decided to have the students build houses in MinecraftEdu that follow green building principles and ideas. The first step is research. Students researched four aspects of green building- Renewal materials, building design, passive energy use, and active energy capture. Students wrote a 6 paragraph essay on what they found most interesting when they were researching. I have some students who were so excited, they worked on their essay at home and were able to go on MinecraftEdu and start building their house the second day of the unit. One student turned his essay into google classroom at 2am! I generated a super flat world, and used border blocks to create various areas of the town. Along with building their own eco friendly house, they are also working in groups to build a central park, school, hospital, community farm, recreation center, and shopping area. I made a paper map of the town and labeled the "building lots" that students can build their houses. As students get done with their essay, they are allowed to pick a building lot from the map and get onto MinecraftEdu. Students spawn in a floating gazebo and use a teleport block to travel to the house building lot that they picked.
I updated the blog with photos, but here they are again~
I have a group of boys who are done, so they are building a giant roller coaster. We tried to get a video of it today, but there was too much lag from all the extra chickens. (For some reason, throwing chickens at each-other has become a thing, so I had to turn off animals for a while). We will try again tomorrow, so watch this spot for a video!
Video update- The boys who made the roller coaster also agreed to be guest bloggers, so we posted the video as part of their post.
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