Minecraft Wiki:Projects/Minecraft in schools

 NOTE:  We believe that this page should not be merged with the Minecraft in Education Page, this is completely different to their page.

In this wiki we want to talk about Minecraft being used as a Learning Tool in schools. We know that it is actually a really good tool to use to help with teaching, learning and presenting work in schools. This wiki may seem a little bit similar to the Minecraft_Wiki:Projects/Minecraft_in_education wiki, but there is one major difference between our two pages; their page aims to use minecraft survival in education to mainly build on teamwork and how to play minecraft [citation needed]. Whereas we intend to use minecraft in creative to teach students about electronics, 3D design and how to go about designing and modelling objects.

The Main Idea
We want to get minecraft to be used for educational purposes, as well as for fun. For education we don't mean having a bunch of kids on computers playing minecraft survival, we mean a bunch of kids on computers learning things, and testing them out, looking at how they work and improving them.

Who's Involved
Ok, I must admit... It's really just me and a few friends who don't have minecraft wiki accounts at the moment...  List of people involved: 
 * Fire2738 (talk) 09:52, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

To Do List
Ok, this is my planned, to-do list:
 * Setting up a Minecraft teaching environment section (continue it also)
 * Subjects that could be taught sections
 * Electronics
 * Architecture
 * More possible subjects
 * Teaching Strategies (I know, a bit boring but needed)
 * Getting more pictures
 * Organising Information into separate Pages
 * Will be done when all information is finished

How a Class might Work
At our school we had an unofficial Minecraft Program. We had a teacher who played a little bit of minecraft and also new a lot about electronics and programming. He got together groups of about 6 and we would be sat down in classes with him. He taught us all sorts of things about electronics; starting from basic terminology and then about logic and making machines that would work and interact with people or the minecraft environment and learning about binary. He also taught us about space and rockets (but that's something else entirely). As we learnt more we were given harder projects. We started off with small projects like an AND gate powering a door, to an XOR gate for a light in a room (turns on and off from 2 inputs), to contraptions like a lighthouse or piston doors. And finally we were given big projects. The teacher would print us out the blueprint for an electrical component and we were to make it in minecraft, we weren;t to make it the quick way, or from Youtube; we had to make it exactly as it was, using the logic gates and wiring exactly as it actually worked. One major project we had was an 7-Bit Display system that worked from 4 levers; each controlling one byte (it could display 1 - 9). Later, we expanded on the 7-Bit Display, we added a binary adder and subtracter to it so that it would count down or up. Once this was done we had all sorts of fun with it. We took a schematic of it and used it for all sorts off purposes, including a pig race where it would count down, the gates would open and it would show which lane was leading. Although the 7-Bit Display was a bit buggy and laggy it still worked as well as a real one.

Setting up the Minecraft Teaching Environment
In this section we will talk about how to set up a teaching environment that can be used for education. It should be relatively easy to follow and shouldn't be too hard to understand.  The Main things Required  Firstly, you want to get together two to six (depending on your preference) computers that will be used for your students. You might like to buy some cheap, but reliable graphics cards and RAM cells for the computers so they can run minecraft... I would recommend at least 2GB of RAM for each computer. You will also want to get another computer (could be Windows Server OS) that will run as your main server for the students to connect to.  Connecting everything together  Secondly, you will want to connect all of your computers together so they can connect easily and quickly. You may like to get a board like thing (I don't know what it is called), but it enables you to plug in blue-ethernet cables into one side so that multiple computers can use the same ethernet port. It also establishes a sort of LAN network I believe. Anyway, you'll want to connect all the computers together so they can connect to each other. Once they can connect via minecraft LAN you can be pretty sure that the connection works.  Setting up the Server  Thirdly, we need to get a minecraft server up and running. You can set up your server using either Vanilla (un-changed Minecraft) or Bukkit. We would definitely recommend you use Bukkit as it has a large, friendly community and has a wide range of usable plugins. You'll want to download the .jar file for either Bukkit or Minecraft Vanilla. Vanilla can be found at: www.minecraft.net. Bukkit can be found at: www.bukkit.org, if you have trouble finding the Bukkit download go to this link and choose the appropriate version of CraftBukkit: http://dl.bukkit.org/downloads/craftbukkit/. Once you have downloaded your server .jar, make a folder on your server computer. The folder can be where ever you like, but we recommend that you put it in your C: Drive. Call the folder something like "School Server" and put the .jar file in it. Now you will want to make the server. To create the server just follow the tutorial on Bukkit (the link will be a bit lower), you'll also want to rename your .jar file to something like "server.jar" and then where it says, "craftbukkit.jar" replace it with the name of your .jar file, eg. "server.jar". The tutorial is the same for Bukkit as it is for vanilla. Bukkit Tutorial: http://wiki.bukkit.org/Setting_up_a_server. Once your server is up-and-running you will have multiple folders in your server directory. For example (if you used Bukkit) you will have a folder called Plugins. Run the .bat you made from the tutorial to start your server. Write "stop" in the console window to stop the server. It is very important that you write "stop" and don't just close the window.  Setting up the Minecraft Environment  Next we will talk about setting up the minecraft environment. You may like to let your students do a little bit of survival gameplay just to see how well they get along and to see if they have basic skills in minecraft (controls and how to use inventory mainly). A good way to check if they will work together is if you watch how they play. Do they all group together and build a shared house/base and all help out or do they separate and do solo survival. It's a really good sign if they all join together; this means that they can work as a team. It is also a good idea to cycle the students through having OP Status, being an OP (or "operator") means that you have access to all commands. It is good to cycle through OP to see if the students are reliable and trustworthy of having the ability to do anything. I forgot to mention that you should let the server generate a normal world and not a superflat or amplified world (it is normal by default) this is because they will want to have an environment that they can use for their work and not just a flat bit of land with no variation.  Appropriate Plugins  Which plugins should you get for your Bukkit server? Well here is our top list of plugins that you should get. If you are making a vanilla server skip this area. You can download your the plugins from: http://plugins.bukkit.org. Just search the name of the plugin and you should easily be able to find it. To use a plugin, download the .jar file for it and then put the .jar file in the "Plugins" folder. For a plugin to work you will need to restart your server. List of Recommended Plugins:
 * "LWC" - Lock with Commands is a very useful plugin, it enables players to lock chests so that others can't access them. It is good to have because then players can keep important items in a chest and not have to worry about someone taking or losing them.
 * "World Edit" - World Edit is a great plugin to have. It enables players to edit terrain on a large scale and to save and load schematic files. Schematics are sort of like saving a section of terrain so you can easily copy or move it without having to rebuild.