All Ages
Careers and Management
Government and Politics
Technology
Students co-construct criteria for a village and then employ critical thinking, creativity and communication while collaboratively creating a village!
January 3, 2017
31 Town Service Suggestions
This Sway was made for the purposes of the Minecraft Education Edition Musical Chair Project by Global Minecraft Mentor Benjamin Kelly. 31 suggestions
Project Video - Showing Examples
A project video with project card and 2 station examples. A town bridge and sewer system!
Project Card - Description Card
A one-page card describing project quickly
Minecraft Musical Chairs Project - Movement, Motivation and Inclusive Education!
Do many hands really make little work?
Will a village where everyone has input on everything be successfully designed?
Can students creatively add improvements to work done before they were involved?
This project serves as a terrific starter project for teachers and classes new to Minecraft Education Edition. Using the seed suggested here or another with a guaranteed village near spawn students can begin to take that simple village to a whole new level. From village to legit town involves a lot of work but by employing the Musical Chairs Project approach every students will feel 100% involved and engagement will never decrease through the life of the project. It takes a village to raise a student and it takes a class of students to raise a village to town status! Engineering, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication! This project has it all! Let the students use Redstone to add a computational thinking component and include responsible design to enforce citizenship components.
Students begin by co-constructing criteria with their teacher for a perfect town or village. What services should be in a town? I have included a list of 31 suggestions to help teachers guide their classes to these answers so as not to miss anything engaging.
Students are assginedor randomly select a number corresponding to a service for the town. They head to teacher pre-determined location and erect a sign with "Station #" and their name. Then they start building. When the teacher indicates that time is up (In game play make it night or another cool sign" students create a sign saying what they added and circle to the next site within the game!
Once students arrive at the new site they look over the build, determine what positive attributes they can add (large or small) and being to add to the service site. Once the teacher indicates it is time to leave they again leave a sign with their name and what they added before heading off to their third station.
This continues until the teacher is satisfied with the builds or until each student returns home to their original station.
When you are done you will have turned a village into a Minecraft Town where each students has creatively and critically added collaboratively to each new piece of the town. The ownership and pride should be evident.
Use this Musical Chairs Approach for all large builds such as the build of your school or a replica of your neighbourhood or town.
Students will use critical thinking when determining what to add to the given service station
Students will use creativity when adding their improvements to the stations
Students will communicate concisely when stating what they have contributed
Students will work collaboratively to raise a village to town status
Students will employ engineering concepts ensuring that all builds are safe and as realistic as possible
Students will employ ethics and citizenship when possible ensuring builds are in the best interest of the entire town or Minecraftian world!