What is Minecraft Education Edition?

Minecraft Education Edition (MEE) is a virtual educational platform, that provides an opportunity for students and teachers to collaborate and create in an immersive environment. It is also a platform where students can safely demonstrate their learning and competence in a scaffolded, simulated real world experience.

During terms 3 and 4 of 2017, a limited number of schools participated in a technical pilot to test the capacity of Minecraft Education Edition and prepare it for release to their students and teachers. As part of this process, the schools pioneered some awesome experiences and the T4L team would like to share some of those with you!

Digital Citizenship, Science and Agriculture and comparing environments: Forestville Public School

The students and teachers at Forestville Public School have tested MEE across all stages. Teacher Aidan Baker challenged his Year 4 students to build and compare different environments as part of their unit in Geography. Students first needed to learn about the features of their chosen environment and then used MEE to consolidate and demonstrate their learning, creating some amazing interactive virtual experiences. You can see below one student's visualisation of the differences in crop layout and farming techniques.

Minecraft for science and agriculture

It is also possible to use MEE to display intricate details. Emma Hunt and her Year 3students completed a summative assessment in Science as students constructed and labeled the reproductive parts of a flower. The results and level of detail were amazing, and I can imagine students will remember this is knowledge and learning for life.

One of the exciting features of MEE is the ability for students to join each other's worlds and collaborate. As a consequence, in another part of the school teacher May Chiu pioneered the development of a MEE Charter for her Year 5 class, guiding student participation in collaborative worlds. Students worked with Ms Chiu to define expected in-world behaviour and also to outline the consequences of breaking the charter. Ms Chiu remarked on how responsive students were to this experience and how they understood and were accepting of the need for guidelines and consequences. An extraordinary journey in Digital Citizenship.

Forestville PS - MEE Charter

Sustainable Suburbs: Glenwood High

Year 10 students are Glenwood High School have been working with Microsoft Innovative Educator, Noelene Callaghan to develop a sustainable suburb in their study of Urban Growth and Decline in Geography. This experience providing an opportunity for students to create something tangible as a way of synthesising their knowledge and becoming responsible global citizens.

Sustainable Suburbs - Glenwood High School

This collaborative world is sure to catch the attention of our state's planners as they look to the innovators and decision makers of the future for creativity, ingenuity and out of the box thinking. Take a look at a video summary of their experiences below!

Collaborative Problem Solving with Code Connect: Yass High School

Eager to connect MEE to learning in STEM and computational thinking, students at Yass High School, led by teacher Nick Biddle, tested out the capabilities of Code Connect within MEE. Code Connect enables students to automate simple and complex tasks in a world. Utilising both the MakeCode and JavaScript interfaces, students in stages 4 and 5 designed and tested code that instructed their Minecraft agent (robot player) to dance and complete construction tasks. Students worked collaboratively to complete many of the challenges and implemented code fragments based on block distance calculations, demonstrating the complexity that can be obtained within the coding interface. This is one 'Companion App' worth using and a compelling reason to give MEE a try in your Future Focused classroom!

Yass High School using Code Connect in MEE

Playground Design: Mount St Thomas Public School

Are you redesigning your school or playground? Is a maker-space on the agenda? Many schools like Mount St Thomas PS are actively working with their students to design these spaces while ensuring they meet the needs of their primary customers. Teacher Jen Faulconbridge has inspired her students with a task to create their ideal playground. Deploying key mathematical skills of scale and measurement at the same time as unleashing their innovation and creativity potential. Water parks and parkour courses were just some of the way-out designs that had grounding in mathematical reality. They helpred to illustrate the engaging ways that MEE can be applied across the curriculum.

Student architects and builders: Batemans Bay Public School

One of the most powerful features of MEE is the ability to unleash students as creators. Michael Scorer from Batemans Bay Public School, led his students on a journey from planning to creation as they developed architectural designs and then converted their vision into 3D with the aid of MEE. Students demonstrated mastery of key mathematical skills including scale and measurement, at the same time as meeting a future focused design brief that met many Science, Technology and Mathematics outcomes.

Future Directions: Quakers Hill PS

The team from Quakers Hill Public School, led by teacher Kristine Belista, utilised the MEE pilot as an opportunity for students to complete the tutorial, familiarise themselves with the program and explore the open world, in preparation for more curriculum oriented adventures to come. Throughout, they saw students engaged in collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving. The team were excited by the dialogue and deep conversations that the students participated in. This experience opening a new world of opportunities for students to code and explore sequential thinking. The teachers experienced many ‘light bulb’ moments as they thought of creative ways to embed MEE into existing programs. 2018 is looking exciting for Minecrafters at Quakers Hill Public School.

Minecraft EE is a hit at Quakers Hill Public School

School Design: Campbelltown Performing Arts High School (CPAHS)

The teachers at Campbelltown Performing Arts High School have been using Minecraft over a number of stages and subject areas. In Stage 5, IST students have been recreating their school in MEE with a specific focus on design and programming elements, with a focus on problem solving and collaborative work practices. With great attention to detail and architecture, students have been recreating their ‘school world’ with the intention of it being used in a number of planned future projects, including supporting students transitioning through a virtual tour of their new school. This world will be used to support design of future projects within the school prior to implementation.

Students in Stage 4 have been using design thinking and Minecraft to represent their ideas to improve sustainable practices within the school environment. An example of this is a group who wanted to reduce food waste and increase access to high quality compost to fertilise school community gardens. Together, the students designed a solar panel powered compost bin aimed at producing compost a faster and higher yield rate than traditional methods. Students were able to represent a working model of their design in MEE as well as a scaled and accurate representation of its potential location in the school environment prior to construction and installation.

Students in Stage 4 HSIE (Human Society and its Environment) have also been studying aspects of liveable environments and have used MEE to create a contemporary world that was detailed, visually appealing and included features of a liveable cities including access to services and resources. Using their knowledge of HSIE students were able to collaboratively design, articulate and justify the features of their liveable world and demonstrate achievement of syllabus outcomes using future focused skills.

Collaborative projects using Minecraft at Campbelltown Performing Arts High School have required students to deploy high level design skills in conjunction with future focused skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking. They have also drawn upon syllabus outcomes in mathematics, HSIE and technology syllabus documents requiring students to use subject-specific knowledge to create new designs and solutions.

Japanese Landmarks and Cultural Installations:
Callaghan College Wallsend

Keen for her students to explore the cultural and historical landscape of Japan, Languages teacher Stacy Lambert set her year 7 Japanese students the challenge of recreating cultural landmarks such as the Miyajima Tori Gate. First students needed to investigate their chosen landmark, learning about its significance. Then using mathematical skills of scale and measurement, they constructed their structures in MEE. To complete the picture, students placed information signs in Hiragana, consolidating their learning in Japanese and also displaying their cultural understanding.

MEE cultural task at Callaghan College Wallsend Campus

In addition, it was exciting to see the 'Rules of Engagement' defined by year 10 Minecrafters. Minecraft is proving tp be an effective tool for the discussion of digital citizenship and ethics in both the primary and secondary classroom.

Ecologically Sustainable World:
Hoxton Park Public School

How are you getting your students to present their information? Is PowerPoint still on the agenda? How about a virtual experience where students can demonstrate their learning by taking you on a tour and telling a story? That is exactly what the students from Hoxton Park Public School did as they worked collaboratively to build an ecologically sustainable world. Expanding on their learning in the classroom in both HSIE and Mathematics, theirs is a great demonstration of the cross-curricular potential of Minecraft Education Edition.

Find out more

Have you been inspired by these stories from our MEE Pioneers? We are now accepting applications from schools for Early Access to MEE in 2018. After the early access program is complete, MEE will be offered to all students and teachers in NSW public schools. For more information and updates visit the DoE Minecraft Yammer community.