Minecraft@NCS 2014 Starts MONDAY! What’s New?

Our Minecraft after-school program gets underway Monday after school and it’s going to be bigger and better than ever. We’ve learned a lot over the years and are confident the changes we’re making this year will result in a greater learning experience and gobs more fun for all involved. Here are some of the changes.

Latest Version of MinecraftEDU

We’re running 1.7.10 stable, which has lots of awesome new features, but the one that surely will be most appreciated by our kids playing Survival mode is the ‘Keep Inventory’ option. This prevents kids from forfeiting their inventory when their player dies. This addresses one of the most common complaints and problems we face, especially with younger players who easily get frustrated and overwhelmed at the loss of inventory in these situations. I can’t wait to see how happy they are when they get to keep their inventory…

Dedicated, Private Build Areas for Teams in our Survival World

Kids love to work together … until they don’t. One of our greatest challenges is providing teams with dedicated areas that are unique and physically separate from each other. We’ve done this in the past, but not well. This year, we’ve got pre-established locations with a teleportation system to move kids around:

So they can set their home and always be able to come back to it.

Dedicated Creative World for Newbies (and those who prefer Creative mode)

We have used this particular build, originally called “Grade2City,” because it is a great way to give build teams dedicated work spaces (some kids have figured out how to defeat/overcome the border blocks!) Each plot has unique features that make it fun to explore, like these underground caverns:

These spaces work really well for kids who want to play in Creative mode, and for players new to the game. The plots provide a bounded area to work in and they help foster teamwork.

Middle School Minecraft Mentors – up to three per session

The wide range of ages and abilities in these classes make it challenging at times for me to ensure everyone’s getting the help they need so they can have the most fun possible. This year, we asked for and received approval to recruit volunteers – middle school Minecraft experts – to join us. The call went out and we now have six approved mentors who will be with us for the Fall sessions. (New mentors will be chosen for the Winter session, which starts up in early December.) These Minecraft experts (one girl and two boys per session) will be working with students that need help, demonstrating building techniques (both simple and advanced), helping build and manage the servers (they’ll have “Op” privileges a.k.a. teacher powers), documenting build progress via screencasts (movies) and digital photography. I can’t wait to see what these kids can do, and, I look forward to being able to lead groups of learners myself, in ways that were not possible when I ran the program by myself.

Minecraft on a USB Key – Brilliant!

Each participant will use a “Minecraft Key” during our sessions. (Sadly, no, they can’t take them home.) These USB keys (which I bought on eBay) hold the Minecraft program and configuration files. If I need to change or update something, I just update the master key and copy it to all the others. Simple, painless, fast & efficient. This way, every kid playing will have the correct servers, settings, etc. every time. No hassles!

So I guess that wraps it up. Looking forward to an exciting 8-week program! More to come!

Best,

Mr. Jarrett