A Student Perspective on Minecraft EDU

student-created Minecraft civilizations

After students had completed their Minecraft civilization projects for Mr. Obach's Grade 8 Social Studies class, I asked them to share feedback with me.   This is the first time we've used MinecraftEDU for a classroom project, so I was curious to see what students had to say about their experience.








Here are Kylin's responses to my questions (shared with her permission):

Describe your Minecraft project in 2-3 sentences.  What were you trying to do/show/learn?

We were to make an imaginary civilization with a partner. Our imaginary civilization included a temple, houses, a river, farmland, forest. We used Minecraft to show what our imaginary civilization looked like. 

Positives: What were some of the things you liked about this project?  What are some advantages of using Minecraft for this project? What did you learn?

I liked having the freedom to create a 3D representation of a civilization that was created through imaginary. It was cool because we worked for about 3 hours on our civilization. After three hours of work it was cool to see it coming together, walk through it and see all the things you made.

The main advantage was that once you think up things you can just build it in Minecraft. There are no limits to creativity. You can just think of something and you can build it. If we were to be working on the same thing, it is easier because it would be done faster instead of one person working on it. If we were working on separate things, after you finished something or one person finished something you can immediately start working on other things and not have to worry about finishing other buildings.

I learned that there is a lot of planning to do before you can start creating your civilization.

Challenges: What were some challenges that you faced while working on the project?  

When you first get in, we had trouble finding our partner in the world we created. We eventually found each other and once we did we got straight to work.

The amount of time we had in each class was a challenge. We only have 30 minute classes and if we were to have an hour class I think we would have had more time to add more detail.

You always had to go to the same computer or you had to scroll through your files to find the correct file.

Other: What else would you like people to know about this project? 

I definitely think other students and teachers should try something like this because it is a fun experience and.. It’s just fun! It’s a fun way to learn.

Do you need to be an expert at Minecraft to do something like this?  

No, you do not need to be an expert. It’s super easy to just build anything because all you have to know is how to place a block. That’s it. After that you just create anything with different blocks or materials.

Could MinecraftEDU be used for other projects?

Minecraft would be better for some projects than others.