A few people have been asking for some resources for Minecraft in education and I thought I'd post a few links here as well as a few reflections of my own.

First, if you're interested in Minecraft, you should be following these people on Twitter or on their personal blogging spaces:

@notch (Markus Persson - Creator of Minecraft)

@deangroom (Educator and part of Massively Minecraft)

@jokay (Virtual Worlds enthusiast and part of Massively Minecraft also)

@MinecraftTeachr (Joel Levin - Educator using Minecraft with kids)

These people are doing things on a much larger scale and with more ambition than we are...and are awesomely friendly and supportive people who love to play Minecraft too.

Similarly, if you haven't seen some of the amazing videos by Adam Montoya (@SeaNanners) you should start with the first video in this series. Note: Language may not be appropriate for younger viewers...but never offensive. It was this video series that got me into Minecraft.

(I've also posted a few months ago about Learning with Minecraft in another space on this blog - this post has a lot more links to videos and resources you might want to explore.)

Here are some of my own reflections and suggestions on how Minecraft can work in your own school environment. 

It's absolutely crucial to have your own space to play around in. Minecraft on it's own is great, but the community aspect of multiplayer is astounding. In multiplayer mode, students can work together on projects, learn from and teach each other different crafting techniques, and inspire creativity. We were super lucky to have Redstone Host offer to host our server for free - and we can have up to 64 users at one time...mind you, we've never had more than 26 on during school hours. (Keep in mind the bandwidth you'll need to run this kind of enterprise and consult with your IT team ahead of time)

You can host a server yourself - it's free, but takes time to set up and you need some know how...which I don't have...hence RedstoneHost. Nice part is that you can modify the server to fit your liking. We originally started the server in Survival Mode - meaning players battle monsters, can get injured and have to look for resources in order to achieve some success. What we found really quickly was that students wanted to create a lot more, so most (if not all) of the players switched to Creative Mode and are just building whatever they can imagine. In the future we'll probably run two servers - one creative and one survival to give people a choice on how they want their Minecraft experience to be.

Another aspect of having a server is that it gives you ownership of the world you're in. Our server now has a Chatsworth logo in it, various flags from our various countries represented and we're working towards a 1:1 scale model of our school. Having this ability to own our space is crucial for the students, and they take care of it accordingly.  According to Notch, there will eventually be portals between servers - making school to school Minecraft experiences a reality. 

One of the hardest parts was to give students control of the server, but in order for this to really be a student experience - they need to be managing as much of the experience as possible, so we select student moderators each week (Ops or Mods). The Ops have quite a bit of power within the server, and can even kick and ban users based on their name or IP address. Some of the commands they have access to are listed here:

Our Moderators rotate every week, and we're trying to have one from each grade level. In addition to running things within the server, Moderators are in control of our Minecraft CCA webpage also and are dealing with questions, comments and concerns posted by their peers. 

Part of being a Moderator means they also have to maintain the Announcements page - and write blog-style posts on their experiences. I'm hoping to see some screencaps there, even some video at some point...will depend on the comfort level of the Mods...but I think once one student starts posting - they'll all start adding their posts. Hoping...

It will be interesting to see how griefing issues are dealt with by the students...and who takes the plunge into banning someone. Student leadership skills are sharpened pretty nicely having this much power and responsibility within the community. 

In our first meeting we discussed how we wanted the server to run and which modifications we were interested in using - turns out most didn't want any modifications and wanted to run the server in vanilla mode...or as close to it as possible. Other discussions that came up were around the use of lava (which can be highly dangerous if not handled properly), and we agreed to just hold off using it for a while - at least until everyone is comfortable with the idea of using it decoratively. One or two students have had their houses torched by putting lava down and spilling it everywhere. 

Another agreement was that destructive behaviour would not be tolerated by the Mods...meaning abandoned villages and mines were not to be griefed unless a discussion happened with the Mods beforehand. TNT was also banned on the grounds that it's impossible to control. 

It's important to meet once a week and talk about issues that come up during regular play. Most of the creating happens during the week after school - so the weekly CCA meeting is usually to chat with other crafters, go over any issues and make some decisions for the server. Moderators are also picked each week at the meeting.

It's important to remind the students that it's THEIR world, and the teachers who are associated with it are merely observers in a supervisory role...then leave them alone as much as possible.

A great idea is to have other teachers, friends and even students visit the server and see what's going on. You can easily add some users to the server whitelist and give them temporary access. When @colingally (uber teacher from ISS), @TSherwood and Mr. Egmond Boon wanted to join, the students were really excited that other teachers were visiting and were proud to show off their creations. What happened rather quickly was that the teachers and students were crafting together...on the same projects, and the real-time collaboration was just awesome. 

In the future, I'd love to see teachers and students from other schools around the world come in on virtual field trips and take a walk around our server - even take a walk around our school if we can actually finish it off. 

Having a server means having a community, and in any community you are going to have your little issues - Minecraft calls these people griefers. To grief in Minecraft is a really crummy thing to do - especially if you are all part of the same community and meet once a week. So, if you are concerned about bullying, griefing or just don't trust your students - consider some add on software from Bukkit - and you can spare yourself the headache. We haven't installed any anti-grief software yet, and I really don't want to get there...hoping we can continue to inspire students to maintain the state of things because they want to...not because they have to.

It is absolutely crucial that the teachers involved with Minecraft at your school are Minecraft players also. It just won't work with the same degree of success if you don't play. For some people, this will sound problematic...a lot of teachers don't have time to play video games. Yet, the students will engage more in the experience when they respect the fact that their teachers are players also...the level playing field makes more opportunities for deeper interaction.  

It's refreshing to walk through the canteen and talk to younger students about the Minecraft world we share, share crafting tips, and work on projects in the server. It's cool to nod knowingly at older students who just finished the Parthenon with you, but might not want to talk about it in front of their friends. 

There really isn't much grey area here...you simply have to play. Don't worry though, there are lots of resources to help you get started, and your students will teach you also. It's also hella fun.

RELATED: The question often arises - Are there any girls in your CCA? The answer is no, not yet. There was a female student who signed up, but had other committments and couldn't make it. There are also no female teachers associated with the CCA yet, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. I'd love it if @jokay paid a visit and looked around - the students love visitors. The primary CCA had a lot more girls last year, and I'm wondering what the difference is in Secondary...it would be interesting to see how different the world might look if there were female students crafting and building within.

I know it's still early, but I'm really excited about the potential for this amazing little game at Chatsworth. I'm looking forward to the student posts on the blog, looking forward to the new creations, and maybe the 1:1 model of the school. I'm looking forward to the challenges that come up - server issues, griefing, and Moderator conversations. I'm looking forward to other students and teachers getting involved, and connecting with other schools who are playing Minecraft also. 

But most of all I'm looking forward to how the relationships we're building with our students will shape our school community on a larger scale. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the server is open and the future is bright. 

Happy mining.

 

Edit: I was contacted by Joel Levin (The Minecraft Teacher) about his recent collaboration with Mojang and he had this to add.