Minepark - Building Portugal

6-7 yrs old

8-10 yrs old

11-13 yrs old

14-18 yrs old

Art and Design

Geography

History

A collaborative, social and creative project where students learn about a country's geography, monuments and culture through Minecraft.

Submitted By: Kyriakos Koursaris

July 20, 2017

Lesson Plan
My Notes

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Skills

Collaboration
Communication
Creativity

External References

Minepark @ Wordpress

A blog documenting the Minecraft activities that students participate in at PaRK International School.

My country, your country @ YouTube

Short video of the learning process and way of working throughout the project.

Supporting Files

Pictures

In-game screenshots of various locations and projects.

Learning Objectives

Students will study the geography of Portugal (topography and terrain).
Students will learn about the main monuments of Portugal (name, location, architecture and history).
Students will communicate, collaborate and cooperate through an online world.
Students will recreate their country in a 1 to 1 scale.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of 3D space orientation.
Students will research real life locations through pictures and translate them into 3D objects.

Guiding Ideas

How can we all work together in groups inside an online world and establish a sustainable and productive workflow for implementing and completing projects?

Can Minecraft help us explore our country's culture in new and original ways, as well as help us demonstrate our learning through the construction of monuments?

Student Activities

Minepark is a Minecraft student project, part of a global educational project called "My country, your country". In “My Country, Your Country”, students from schools around the world get together to create their country geographically through Minecraft. The objective is to offer students an interactive and fun way to study the geography of the ASEM member countries. By setting up public servers, the students communicate over the platforms themselves, where they can also visit each others worlds. In addition, the students document their workflow and post screenshots of their creations on Facebook and blogs.

Some of the objectives of this project include to know the landscape of ASEM countries, foster collaboration among the students and exchange and share information on technology through various discussions. Expected outcomes include the creation of a digital landscape map and images, as well as the understanding of spacial orientation and landscape image. With this contribution, the project expects to build understanding among the participants and minimise stereotypes.

Workflow:

Decide on a project: Students can choose to work on a specific monument or help shape a region based on its natural characteristics.
Create a team: Students can choose who they work with, and whenever possible join in with other groups.
Research: Students have to thoroughly research their project before building it by checking out pictures and videos of the real location.
Build: Students have to finish any current project before moving to the next.
Rinse and repeat.

Performance Expectations

Through a carefully and strategically constructed lesson plan students not only learn about their country's geography and monuments, but are also involved in interdisciplinary learning through disciplines such as Geography, History, English, Engineering and Architecture. The pedagogical impact of this project extends to areas such as the 21st century skills, project planning, team management and research, stimulating the curiosity of the students in unexpected and surprising ways that go beyond simple block placement, such as learning how the game works, working with in-game commands and further investigating their current objectives independently.

The students are given the opportunity to choose their group members as well as the project they want to work on, either a monument or a natural habitat of the country. The students have the liberty to move freely inside the virtual world, as long as they respect the rules and practises defined in the very beginning of the project, such as only change their group and move to a new project when their current one is completed.