Ideas for Using Minecraft in HE Created by Stephen Taylor

About the Resource

This is a 4 door method inspired learning resource built within Minecraft.

Explore use cases and case studies in the Classroom
Try some of the activities yourself in the Playground
Share ideas with other users in the Cafeteria (shared via a Padlet)
Go to the Exam hall to find Minecraft Education official training and badges.

If you don't have access to Minecraft Education Edition at all there is a video attached at the bottom of this webpage which showcases the entire resource.

This resource was created as part of the MA Digital Education from the University of Leeds. The accompanying essay justifying the choices made in its creation is attached: EDUC5267M Produce a digital learning resource for use in your professional context and an accompanying rationale.

Download the Minecraft World

To begin with download the HE Ideas for Using Minecraft World (mcworld, 831KB) file and then you can begin. If you already know what you are doing then feel free to get started. Otherwise continue reading for further guidance:

Licensing and Downloading Minecraft Education

Most Microsoft Education licenses come with Minecraft Education Education included - the A1 license has limited uses per person without an additional subscription, but the higher licenses have the full product.

Education Licensing comparison (from Microsoft's EDU Licensing Comparison table)

You can visit Minecraft Education's Quick Start page to download it. Though you may need to get your company IT infrastructure team to allow access to it on your work devices.

It can also work on mobiles and tablets:

Download on Apple Devices
Download on Android Devices

Signing In

Once you have the app installed open it and it will prompt you to sign in

Sign in as you would to any Microsoft product with your university credentials.

Starting the Game

Once you have signed in you need to press Play on the Minecraft Education home page.

Changing your Avatar

Before doing this there is the option to modify your avatar using the hangar button underneath the Character on the right with your name if it makes you more comfortable to have a facsimile of yourself rather than the default avatar (who is called Steve.)

There are a large variety of pre-made "skins" to choose from. Click on the one you wish to use.

Accessing the resource

Next you are going to download the HE Ideas for Using Minecraft (mcworld, 831KB) if you haven't already.

Then click on Import on the Play screen

Select the world from your files

If done correctly it will say "World Import started..."

If it all works it'll say "World import finished successfully."

Launching the resource

Once that has done you are going to press View My Worlds

The My Worlds screen will appear and you will see the HE Ideas for Using Minecraft world listed next to New World (or amongst any other worlds you already have access to)

There is a search bar at the top if you have many worlds and need to narrow it down.

Click on the HE Ideas for Using Minecraft square and options will appear on it. The one you want to use to try it yourself is Play.

Accessibility: Immersive Reader

When you have got into the game you can point at any text and click the i key on your keyboard to launch immersive reader. When reading a book or talking to an NPC you can click the Immersive reader symbol (shown below) to launch it.

This will load in a separate window and give you the ability to:

Have the text read aloud,

Add colour filters,
Change the font size,
Change the font type,
Increase line spacing

Add visual reminders of adjectives, nouns, verbs, adjectives
Split words into syllables

Add line focus so you only see 1 or 3 lines at a time
Add a picture dictionary to help understand words
Translate the text into 60+ languages by word or by document
45 of those languages can also be used in conjunction with the read aloud tool

Pause Menu

Pressing the Esc key at any time will bring up the pause menu, from here you have a variety of options:

Resource Link

This is a hyperlink to this web page you are currently reading to help give you additional guidance

How to Play

This opens up a large in game help menu on how to do many things, but not everything, within Minecraft. All the basics are there.

Settings

There are a lot of settings in the settings menu that can affect how the world works. The game modes can be set between Creative, Survival and Adventure depending on how its been set up. In this case keep them on Creative otherwise the playground area won't work.

Creative means unlimited access to all blocks, you can't die, you can fly mode. Perfect for education.
Survival means you have to break and collect blocks, you can be damaged and you also have a hunger bar that depletes over time.
Adventure is the same as survival except you cannot break blocks unless you have specific items to do so, you also gain an experience bar as well as the health and hunger bars. This is good if you want students to explore a large world in a gamified setting.

Its also set to Peaceful so no enemies spawn - Minecraft is after all a game. The function of this particular world is to educate about the game, not have monsters or 'Mobs' spawning and distracting players.

There are multiple other settings on the Game part of the menu, but I will allow you to explore those yourself.

Classroom Settings

There are a variety of rules you can set for the members and visitors of your world through the classroom settings menu. Many are similar to those in the world preferences, but it gives you more control over the finer details.

Again have an experiment and see what they each do. But for more information you can visit the Minecraft Education Support Centre post on Classroom Settings.

Accessibility

There are a wide range of accessibility tools in Minecraft to assist. Some are more detailed than others and these can be found in the Accessibility section of the Settings menu.

You can turn on text to speech for the chat function, or for any text that is in the UI. Fair warning, this can feel quite intense at times.
You can set a background opacity to chat messages
You can decide whether the camera shake function is turned on or off for various effects.
You can decide what level of darkness will be on your world if you are afflicted with it.
You can adjust how fast objects glint for and how transparent the visual is - to make it more noticeable or reduce the intensity.
You can set the duration of notifications and messages to a length that suits your ability to read them.
And finally you can scale the graphical user interface GUI to make it easier to see all the items and text.

Leaving the game

When you are ready to leave the game click Save & Exit. This will leave the world how you left it, so you can come back later and continue.

Hosting a world for multiple users

If you want to explore with a group of other people from your institution at the same time, one of you needs to be the Host. So instead of Play you would click Host.

This will launch the game for you but give some additional information. When you press the Esc key to bring up the main menu it will show you the Hosting options which you can toggle between by pressing the world to go to the regular link to this document/ settings /how to play /save and exit; or the faces to go to the hosting menu.

On here there are 5 key components:

The Join Code. This is a randomly generated password made of 4 images that you can share with others to access the world. This can be refreshed if you need to kick someone off and don't want to let them back in.
The Share Link button which gives you a hyperlink to share with others to connect to the hosted game.
Stop Hosting which closes the hosting down, but doesn't exit the game. You need to go on the Globe tab to do that.
A list of everyone on the world at that moment in time and what their permissions are: 👑Crown means Operator - so you can effectively do whatever you want in the world. ⭐Star means Member so they can interact with objects and content. 👋Hand means visitor so they are unable to interact with anything but can explore the world freely.
A connection ID which is an alternative way for people to connect to your world if the share link and join code aren't working.

Share a link

When you click share a link it opens a pop up window which will allow you to share directly via teams, email or google classroom, or copy a hyperlink you can send to others.

When someone follows that link they are sent to a site that will prompt them to either download or open Minecraft. you may need to click a button allowing the website to open Minecraft Education for you.

Once Minecraft has opened it will ask if you were intending to join the world hosted by whomever is hosting it. Click Confirm and it will let you into the world.

You will now be in the same world as each other, able to see one another and interact through the text chat.

Minecraft Pre-created Lesson Plans

As stated throughout the video there are multiple lesson plans already created within Minecraft Education Edition. you can find them in two ways

On the Minecraft for Education Explore Lessons page there are a list of subjects to choose from that will take you to recommend resources.

Within the App, if you click on Library it brings you to a page where you can select from Subject Kits, Monthly build challenges (challenges that work well for Minecraft clubs), starter worlds (so you needn't start with a blank slate) and How to play.

Within the Subject Kits are a few more options compare to the website. On this page we have ones we have already seen.

As you scroll down there are a few others. We have already seen Art & Design, Digital Citizenship and Climate & sustainability from the website. This also adds Literacy & Language and Esports as well.

Both areas also have a search bar where you can narrow down your search further if you haven't found what you are looking for in the subject kits.

As it says in the resource, these don't have to be used as they come, they are all worlds you can modify to make more complex as you need. It just provides a pre-built starting point for you, saving considerable time.

Video run through of resource

Hyperlinks from resource

These are the hyperlinks from the resource in the order they appear in the video