Minecraft in the Classroom: Gaining Approval and Purchasing the Game

The world I have created for students to plot their missions

Chapter 2:

Selling High and Buying Low

Getting Approval from The Big Three:

There are really only three people you need to convince in order to upload Minecraft at your school.  Once those three are on board, you are ready for your adventure into the never ending abyss.

#1 Your site IT expert 

This may be the hardest person to convince, because they will most likely be doing all the work of loading it onto every computer.  Find some time to sit them down in the computer lab to review the website minecraftedu.com.  There you will quickly find what specs are needed and if your internet can handle the bandwidth.  Before purchasing the game, it is very important do download a sample to make sure it can run smoothly on your computers.  If the graphics look like they are not in the 21st century, that is okay, the game is supposed to look like that.  Don't be discouraged, just think, they are getting a glimpse into how we experienced gaming at their age.

#2 Your principal. 

Most likely, if you have an open minded principal you should have no problem here.  The game will cost under $20 dollars a student to run which should not be too huge of a burden if you are working with one grade level or even a class.  We spent $466 dollars for 25 students to each build a California mission, create a community of laws, and work peacefully side by side.  For the amount of standards that addresses, I say that is a pretty good deal.

#3 Your-realalistic-self.

This is the most important person you need to convince.  It sounds fun and all, but you honestly need to take the time to invest, watch videos, and learn from your students the insides and outs of the game. When you purchase it, you will have complete control to build a map for them, toggle settings, and even mute and freeze all students, in case you need to make your point.  (Caution: freezing students while playing Minecraft may result in bodily harm, unbearable noises, and overwhelming sadness.  Do so at your own risk)  I may have gotten carried away creating a huge map of California for them to each plot their mission on, but I had a fun couple Saturday nights doing so.

Purchasing the Game:

Buying the game itself takes a little bit of research.  I can't even tell you with 100% accuracy I did it correctly, but it works, and I could not be more happy. 

The biggest disappointment I had was that the game was not compatible with our class chrome books.  This was a huge letdown as I would have liked to give them reward time to work on their missions in class.  Nonetheless the computer lab computers were purchased within the last 5 years and are more than able to handle the load of the game. 

They have a few options when buying the game.  The first thing you need to do is buy your own school server so that students can only play the game at your school, with their passwords (feel free to correct me if I am wrong in any of this, I am no expert, just letting others learn from my process).  We bought one server for $41 and 25 student accounts at $14 a piece.  This will allow you to have 25 passwords on top of your teacher account.

It seems like there is a way to save the game manual, or save it into the cloud automatically.  We could not seem to get around this as it required us to pay $25 a month for a cloud subscription.  regardless it is well worth it.

 That monthly fee can be a recurring payment, which I highly discourage if you are using a school account, or a one-time monthly charge for 3-12 months.  We selected 3 months as we do not believe it should take longer for the students to complete this project in that time.  I would suggest the same, as you can always add on.

Thoughts:

Like I said before, our grand total for one classroom was $466 at less than $20 a student.  That average price only goes down with the more students you enrolled. I ended up not being able to wait for the computer tech and manually downloaded each game onto 25 computers my self. If you would like to really dive in and find out more technical details the Minecraftedu FAQ page is a fantastic resource to answer any of those pesky questions your principal, IT expert, children or parents may throw at you.


Next weeks addition: Chapter 3: Setting up Your Own World

Minecraft in the Classroom: California Missions

Chapter 1: Getting Started

My Mission

As I go down the never ending rabbit hole that is Minecraft in the Classroom, I decided it would be best to document my process so that others can benefit from my struggles and be left with a simple tutorial on how to set it um seamlessly.  

You see the idea of having a classroom of students create a government, map out their missions, and then bring them to life in a world with their peers sounds so profoundly beneficial to not only themselves, but to their teacher as well.  

In the past week now since I have begun, have dove so deeply into their lives and what 95% of them love to do, every day after school, and I have brought it into the classroom.  I have given each student a medium that they love to work with, and the time to create a world that is far beyond what they ever imagined.  This sounds like too perfect of a storm for an amazing learning experience.  And because of that, I have chosen to document every step of the way.

The Back Story

A year ago, I attended an Alan November seminar.  If you didn't know, the mans a world genius of incorporating tech into the classroom that has a true authentic purpose.  He showed us a possibility and I proposed it to my class the following day.  

"When we build our missions this year, you will have the opportunity to build it out of cardboard, or create in on Minecraft."  

I had never seen such open eyes drooling with excitement.  A few weeks later and hours spent on the computer, a student brought me not only a mission, but an experience.  You see this was far more than creating, this was his entire presentation.  He spent every second of that video describing what he had built and used vocabulary from class to paint the picture of his Mission.  

The Aftermath

After my Principal saw the level of work and rigor that was displayed, he immediately allowed me to purchase the game for the computer lab and getting the platform for every 4th grader to create one. Now I had to figure out how I was going to do this, you see, I HAVE NEVER actually PLAYED the GAME myself...EVER!

I did a little research, figured out how it would work at our school, and committed to the journey.  My following blogs will be a tutorial for purchasing the game, setting up your world, and weekly reports every Saturday night about facilitating their exploration.