How one Minecraft Mentor designed a cross-disciplinary landmark lesson
Minecraft Mentor Nelly Hamed Hadima is an Arabic teacher at Hayah International Academy in Egypt. Nelly’s students had been studying famous landmarks from around the world when she had an idea: use Minecraft: Education Edition to design the landmarks, then 3D print them in the real world.
Nelly proceeded to create a new cross-disciplinary Minecraft lesson with these five goals in mind:
- Combine different subjects (Arabic, math, history, and computer science).
- Encourage collaboration by having students work in teams.
- Utilize Minecraft: Education Edition to bring the landmark history to life.
- Use math skills to design and export the model.
- Teach students to use the 3D printer.
Students started by conducting research on how to design each famous landmark. Next, they began building the landmark model with the Agent using slash commands in Minecraft /give @s structure_block or /give @a structure block.
Structure blocks were placed near the model and from there they used math skills to tinker with the X, Y, and Z axis to move the model into the build area. Once they were happy with the landmark, students exported their work and converted it to a .GLB file, which can be opened on a 3D printer.
The results were amazing! Nelly’s students studied Arabic, geometry, history, and computer science all while building a wonderful world using Minecraft to showcase their work.
We were excited to see that the impacts of this project for Nelly’s students included:
- Nelly’s students learned more information about countries and their landmarks through research.
- They used their math knowledge to bring the models to life.
- They experienced different kinds of 3D extensions.
Nelly worked relentlessly with her students, guiding them every step of the way. Great work to everyone involved!
Learn how to use these key features and explore similar lessons in Minecraft: Education Edition:
- Learn how to use slash commands in this video.
- Learn how to use structure blocks in this video.
- Check out these similar lessons that you can use with your students, Replicating Landmarks or Community Landmark.
Share your classroom creations with us on Pinterest or Twitter via @playcraftlearn and #MinecraftEDU.
