Register NowWhat better way is there for students to learn Computer Science than in the context of their favorite video game?
Minecraft is a huge sandbox and game playing platform. The landscape stretches infinitely in all directions. It extends up into the hills and mountains, and down into dark caverns filled with lava and treasure. Minecraft allows us to teach both designing and coding skills to learners.
Programs such as Minecraft: Education Edition offers a more visual and less wordy way of learning to code as a beginner by using visual block coding. This involves individual blocks of pre-written code that can be dragged and dropped into the script, just like a puzzle piece. This allows students get to go beyond just playing Minecraft, they get to program it! They create mods in Minecraft by learning programming concepts and applying them to realize their ideas.
Additionally, Minecraft allows for coding to be implemented immediately so you can see exactly what you are doing to the game in real-time. This is far more useful than other games, which you would have to continually close and reopen repeatedly every time you made a change just to see the results.
Minecraft: Education Edition allows for the program and the game to be run simultaneously within the same program, allowing for players to hop between playing the game and coding a new modification very quickly.
We use Minecraft for Education Edition for this course. Please watch this video to familiarize yourself with the platform. Minecraft: Education Edition is a game-based learning platform that promotes creativity, collaboration and problem-solving in an immersive digital environment. Minecraft: Education Edition engages students across subjects and bring abstract concepts to life in remote, hybrid and in-person learning environments.
Our goal is to use project-based learning to cover important computer science & art/design concepts like:
- Events & Event Handling
- Coordinates
- Variables
- Iteration
- Conditionals
- Functions and Parameters
- Arrays
- Artificial Intelligence
- Patterns and Motifs
- Building Architecture
- Comics & Stories
Video of Story Making in Minecraft