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Playing Survival Minecraft With a Computer Scientist

I will create an awesome Minecraft world for students to join and play Minecraft with me. I will host the world in Education edition so that students can use the "Minecraft Agent" to automate tasks like collecting resources.
Josiah Blaisdell M.Sc.
Average rating:
5.0
Number of reviews:
(30)
Class

What's included

1 live meeting
1 hrs 15 mins in-class hours per week
Homework
Reading what griefing is and why it is problematic will be required, I may ask students to give me examples of griefing during the session and reward good answers.
Assessment
I will mostly be providing feedback on behavior and the quality of the student's Minecraft creations and/or the efficiency with which they gather resources. For highly creative builds I will take pictures with real-time ray tracing enabled and post them on the course page.

Class Experience

I will moderate a Minecraft: Education Edition survival world for 3 - 15 students in this course. We will cover how to get started in a hard survival world, how to program the agent to dig mines, how to find diamonds, how to manage resources, how to build a survival home, and I will answer questions about the game that the students have. The class will start with a simple challenge (example: smelt 15 iron or take a picture of a library you built). Completing the challenge will be rewarded with additional resources or advantages (like a speed effect for the next session or a token that can be used to teleport the player to another location instantaneously). Once the session starts, students will be free to explore the world, establish their home, collect resources, defend invaders or invade others. 

There are a few rules for gameplay: 
    ⇢ You cannot grief
    ⇢ All players must read what griefing is: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Griefing_prevention and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer . 
    ⇢ You cannot accuse another player of griefing during gameplay. However, you may ask a player to "stop," If I hear someone asking another player to stop, and the other player isn't stopping, I will address it by separating the players into breakout rooms, getting each perspective, and finding a peaceful resolution. 
    ⇢ Players may submit structure blocks to me for importing their creations outside of class into our game, but they must give me at least 2 days notice. If you don't give me 2 days notice I cannot guarantee your structure will be imported in time for the next class. 
    ⇢ Gamers will be able to interact with other players throughout the session and me but must mute their mic (or ensure there is no background noise) when not speaking.
    ⇢ Spamming the text chat or voice channel is not appropriate and will be dealt with swiftly.
    ⇢ Class will begin on time, and I will probably not have time to troubleshoot the minecraft client for you, make sure to test it before class begins. Class will also end on time, but may occasionally go overtime a few minutes.
     ⇢ If students want to play outside of the class, it must go through the parents, not me.
 
To address griefing, the person who has been griefed *must* message me in the Outschool messaging system after class and explain what happened, who they think did it, and why they believe it is griefing. Once I receive the grief report, I will communicate with the accused and explain what happened. I will try and find a peaceful resolution; peaceful resolution may require players to share their screen so that their activity in the game is recorded. Accusations of griefing during gameplay are also heavily discouraged, and repeated allegations of griefing will also be dealt with appropriately.
 
Students are encouraged (but not required) to take my programming class to learn how to program the agent using block-based coding. 
I will teach using occasional breakout rooms to work with students one-on-one if they have a specific question; I may also use breakout rooms if a small group of students wants to work together. I will constantly share my screen, and the same rules that apply to other students will apply to me. I will not cheat or spawn items into the game, and I will not be able to teleport players unless they have teleportation tokens from completing a challenge or have one gear/item from completing weekly challenges. Students should come with basic knowledge of how Minecraft works and be encouraged to answer each other's questions (kindly and without bragging or making others feel left out).

My plan for this course is to host weekly themed challenges that students can choose to participate in (or not!); the themed challenge will require completing a task in-game with creativity and/or efficiency in constructing whatever you build to meet the challenge. In other words, if the challenge is to create a survival home, it will not be enough to make a hollow cube out of Oakwood with a door; you will need to "spruce" it up a little. Finish a challenge and you will be rewarded with teleportation tokens and materials. Highly creative builds or efficient resource gathering will be given additional bounties. 
⇢ Week of Friday, April 8:     Establishing an early game base.
⇢ Week of Friday, April 15:   Iron Age
⇢ Week of Friday, April 22:   Fun with Copper and other weird materials we never use
⇢ Week of Friday, April 29:   Diamonds!
⇢ Week of Friday, May 6:     TNT and leveling
⇢ Week of Friday, May 13:   Nether Portals
⇢ Week of Friday, May 20:   Enchanting
⇢ Week of Friday, May 27:   Programming the Agent to Mine
⇢ Week of Friday, June 3:    Building a generator
⇢ Week of Friday, June 10:  Exploring the Nether

Each week I will post a copy of the world to the class page so players can download it on their own. I will maintain the copy of the world used each week though.
Learning Goals
Students will have the opportunity to learn how to work with others, how to automate tasks in Minecraft using the Minecraft agent, how to survive in hard mode, how to manage their in-game resources, and how to explore the world. They will also be required to learn how to use x, y and z coordinates to navigate the Minecraft world.
learning goal

Other Details

Parental Guidance
Students occasionally use bad language, bad language is relative, I will encourage students to use language that is appropriate for their peers and me, but will also be culturally sensitive. Not everyone has the same definition of "bad" language, so if yours is very conservative (which is totally fine) keep in mind that mine is not conservative because I have students from all over the world. I will enforce the rule that sharing usernames that let students play together outside of class must go through parents as best I can, but students are creative and I know they can figure out ways to share this information so that it is impossible for me to track (for example, they can put their username on a sign in the game and then destroy the sign). Finally, a note on privacy online and the tools used in this class: Minecraft education edition is used in this class. This is a special version of Minecraft that runs about one version behind Minecraft: Bedrock. It has special tools that make it useful for a classroom environment. It is also COPPA compliant: https://educommunity.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360047118972-User-Privacy-and-Minecraft-Education-Edition additionally it is 1 dollar a month, this cost is incorporated into the cost of this class.
Supply List
You must have a computer that can run Minecraft Education Edition and zoom at the same time. Here are the minimum requirements: https://educommunity.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360047556591-System-Requirements . I will not be able to fix problems with the client during class but will absolutely help with problems after class on the course page.
External Resources
In addition to the Outschool classroom, this class uses:
Not an official Minecraft product. Not approved or associated with Mojang.
Joined October, 2021
5.0
30reviews
Profile
Teacher expertise and credentials
I have a master's degree in computer science, I run a Minecraft: Bedrock realm for my city/community, and I work with youth from difficult circumstances in my community to teach programming, and life skills.

Reviews

Live Group Class
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$12

weekly
1x per week
75 min

Completed by 14 learners
Live video meetings
Ages: 9-13
3-18 learners per class

This class is no longer offered
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