Teaching with MinecraftEdu
Contents |
History and Geography
The World of Humanities
A virtual, educational world created by Eric Walker, designed to engage students in the discovery of ancient civilizations and history.
See the Lesson Template page for descriptions and download.
Redstone
How to use redstone to get students to answer questions.
Flip-Flops (most people call them RS-NOR latches)- What are they good for?
I have used these to help control students, mostly to stop more than one student going down the same path.
How to use redstone to teach electrcity....
How to use redstone to teach basic programming.... Using some fancy redstone wiring you can create AND gates, OR gates, IF/ELSE gates. These are basic programming language. Insert tutorial here.
Source(s): Teaching with MinecraftEdu
Science
Performing experiments in Minecraft.
A map demonstrated here can be used to test student reaction times to various stimuli.
Teaching about Neurotransmitters.
A very rough implementation of an idea to teach the concept of neurotransmitters and how they cross the synapse to students.
When I teach this again it will be a much better visual.
3D tours.
An idea that I have not used yet. Create 3D tour maps of various human body parts, like the heart, or get groups of students to create for others.
Gravity
Set up an area where students can measure Minecraft gravity and determine the speed that gravity acts on sand and gravel blocks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Ulb1dCcpc is a video showing a possible set up.
Source(s): Teaching with MinecraftEdu
History/Geography
Ancient civilizations.
Get students to create some form of architecture from the civilization.
Desertifcation
Use the inbuilt map for teaching the impact of logging on reducing soil productivity.
Tropification
Use the inbuilt map for teaching the impact of planting trees and how it may increase the productivity of soil.
Contour/Topographic Maps
Using the randomly generated mountains in Minecraft, get the students to create a contour map 'from the ground up' then using the free mapping tools available on the Minecraft Wiki under 'Mappers' you can create a flat contour map that the students can 'walk' in Minecraft. A rough video explaining the concept is below.
Source(s): Teaching with MinecraftEdu
Languages
Mathematics
Graphs
Use Minecraft to create histograms for visual representation.
Area/Volume
Giving the students a set number of blocks to explore how many shapes they can make with a specific area, or volume, or surface area.
Scale
Using a scale like 1 block = 1m get the students to recreate something. Make it even more interesting by changing the scale.
Probability
Set up a probability experiment as shown in this video to explore experimental probability and theoretical probability.
Source(s): Teaching with MinecraftEdu
