Minecraft teaching -- Black Friday and Cyber Monday.excitement

If you have read any of my previous posts -- away back in the past -- you will know that I am one of those people who sees a benefit to the use of Minecraft, the sandbox game, in education. In the time since I wrote my last post, there has been a veritable explosion of educational products related to Minecraft. Amongst these products are servers which are actually devoted to using Minecraft to teach. I thought, given that it is "that" time of year, that I would share the two that I am most familiar with -- along with any special deals they might have. (I do not gain any personal benefit nor can I speak to the actual utility of these sites. I know people whose children have gained a lot from them, however. I suspect it is a matter of what you put into it...)

So, with that in mind:

1) The first and, perhaps best known, is Skrafty: http://whenyouriseup.com/

    They have a special going right now: I wanted to remind you all about the SKrafty Black 
    Friday weekend sale which ends on Sunday night at midnight!  Have you been wanting 
    to add some SKrafty classes to your homeschool? Now is the time since we have a nice
    discount for you today. ALL classes are 20% off with the code BLACKFRIDAY.

2) http://minecrafthomeschool.com/
    
    From their page: 

                       Benefits of Minecraft Homeschool

• Learning is FUN! Students are assigned weekly lessons that include online videos, informational websites, and Minecraft assignments to apply their learning.
• Teamwork is required! Students must learn to work together and respect each others space to maximize results.
• Technology is here to stay! Typing, TeamSpeak servers, Minecraft servers and understanding the basic workings of the server/client relationship are side effects of living in a Minecraft world.
• Fits Your Schedule – You can study, perform tasks, and work with classmates on your own schedule. Each week we expect you to do the out of game work first, and then login to the server to perform the week’s in-game tasks.

 Both of these servers have been up and running for quite awhile. They have been providing services and have been, to the best of my knowledge, been quite satisfactory in their provision of those services... so if you don't feel quite up to being in charge of Minecraft education just yet, these servers may offer you an attractive alternative.

Learning to live in a Minecraft world -- the next lesson

Hello again!

Yep, I am back. And if you are reading this, you have survived your first nights in a survival type Minecraft world and are beginning to explore and bh uild your own home. If you have friends or children who are Crafters, you may have seen images or Youtube videos like this one of the amazing structures that have been built... (Keep in mind, the work in this video was done by 10 people working together over a period of months -- 10 experienced Crafters and some of the most respected builders in all of the Minecraft community at that.) I show you this video only so that you have a sense of the possible...

I found the following Reddit list: The Gigantic Guide for Building. While many of these are images, some of them lead to Youtube videos or to discussions/wikis about how the various structures  were constructed.

Though I have yet to try this myself, I have found something called the Minecraft Structure Planner -- a companion program for Minecraft that allows you to plan out your buildings... It looks interesting and as of the writing of this post, it is free though the author is open to donations...

And then there is Minecraft Building Tips --- a page that even has BLUEPRINTS! It is a new site so there are only a few so far but it looks promising and you can sign up for his newsletter so you can find out when he adds new blueprints to the page.

If you want to build a castle, look HERE for a Castle Building Guide. For other structures that might need a rounded look, you can find a circle chart HERE.

I know -- there is so much more to learn and the more you learn, the more you discover you NEED to learn -- but isn't that the way of life after all? So I will leave you to explore this newest facet of Minecraft. Enjoy and if you have specific questions, let me know. Until the next time -- Have fun!

Learning to play and build in Minecraft -- help for the beginning Crafter

Dear Minecraft Beginner,

I hope that this record of my own explorations in the exciting new worlds of Minecraft will help you with yours... so, let's go explore!

So -- last time I left you with some Youtube videos and a few definitions. This time I will give you a few basic crafting recipes and something neat I discovered for those interested in building cool buildings. (I admit, I am a closet architect at heart ;)

We will begin with the assumption that the world on which you are playing is set to Survival, Adventure, or Hardcore. Monsters may be turned on or not. There are several different modes within such worlds: Peaceful (Monsters, if on, will not attack), Easy, Normal, and Hard. Monsters, by the way, are not all bad. Besides the fact that it is fun to battle monsters, when you kill a monsters -- Zombies, Creepers, Gasts, Skeletons, Endermen, spiders etc -- there is always the possibility that they might drop something valuable. Spiders drop spidersilk, for example. As you become more experienced in the game, you will discover that people actually deliberately spawn and even 'train' monsters to work for them...

So... when you first arrive in a world:

Your first job is to collect wood. You can do this with your hands.
You need wood so that you can make tools that will allow you to collect stone and coal.
You need coal so that you can make torches
You need torches because monsters spawn in the dark. If you build a house without a light source, monsters will spawn inside your house....
To make tools, you need crafting recipes. SO... here are the basic craft recipes that you will need:

Crafting recipes: ( Not needed if you in Creative mode):
When you click on the letter E, you will open up a box with four boxes:

When you put wood into one block, you will end up with wood planks.
Turn all your wood into planks.
When you put one set of planks into two squares (one a top the other) you will get 4 sticks. You will need these to make torches and tools. Put these into your inventory.
Put one set of planks into each of the 4 boxes and you will create a Crafting Table

With a Crafting Table you can now make Tools:
To make an ax you put two sticks in two lower middle squares, then 3 planks in the upper 3 corner squares.
  (The ax allows you to chop wood faster)
To make a pickax, you put two sticks in the two lower middle square and 3 planks across the top squares.
  (The pickax allows you to mine stone and minerals like coal)
If you put one plank in each square around the outside, you will create a chest where you store your stuff.
If you put one stone block in each square around the outside, you will create a furnace in which you can cook food and smelt glass etc.
To make a torch, you place one stick in the lower square, and one piece of coal above the stick.

The link above has many more crafting recipes for you to explore. But this, I think, is enough to get you started. Have fun!

HELP! For Moms (and Dads) who want to play Minecraft with their kids...

This post is for you -- you brave spirits who, for the love of your children have into the wild and woolly world of Zombies, Creepers, Skeletons, and Endermen. In this world of Minecraft, your children are far more experienced in surviving and prospering. This post will point you toward sources on the web which should assist you in getting through your first and moving forward.

The first thing to understand is that Minecraft comes in two main formats -- Vanilla Minecraft and Minecraft which has been 'modded' by Bukkit pluggins.  

Next -- Minecraft has four gamemodes -- Adventure, Creative, Hardcore, and Survival.   The two most commonly played are Creative and survival. Clear and simple explanations of these four modes can be found HERE.  The Minecraft Wiki provides a little more detail about this. This particular Gameplay wiki provides a table of the various qualities the pertain to each of the various gamemodes.

The mode of the particular world you are playing on will be listed in the title when you first enter in. That mode is selected by the creator of that world whether that creator is you or someone else. The good news is that you can CHANGE that gamemode if necessary -- you can see how to do so on THIS Youtube Video.

If you choose to play to play your initial game of Minecraft on a survival world (and you will find, oh innocent ones, that most Children will start their parents on survival worlds -- which, I admit, can be a lot of fun, once you figure out how to survive them!) the most important thing to know is how to survive your first night. There are many, many stories told of people who built themselves tiny dirt rooms and hid the night therein -- only to discover a hard Minecraft truth... Monsters love to spawn in the dark! So... to help you out, I have dug up a few guides to surviving your first night... and here they are:

How-to-survive-your-first-night-in-Minecraft-in-only 11 steps 

minecraft-worlds-ultimate-survival-guide-part-1

minecraft-starter-guide-extra-survival-tips/

These guides progress from simples -- only 11 steps -- to more complex (The last one, for example, presumes that you have created your own world.) I will leave you now to explore your first night for in Minecraft, as in so much of life, the best learning occurs through doing. I will return for another episode with new ideas and suggestions on what you might want to try in this wonderful and amazing world/game of Minecraft. Welcome and have fun, my fellow crafters!