Minecraft Educators

This tutorial shows you how to use command blocks to give items to players.

Playlist of redstone tutorials starting from the basics.

This stream includes Knowclue Kidd and her students from Elizabeth Morrow Middle School providing a tour through their Morrowcraft server, their wiki, and a demo of the game 'Escape from Morrow' that they created in MineCraft.

Minecraft, Science, and STEM stream which was part of the Minecraft and more Unsymposium.

qCraft is not a simulation of quantum physics, but it does provide 'analogies' that attempt to show how quantum behaviors are different from everyday experience, allowing players to create structures and devices that exhibit Minecraft versions of quantum properties like observer dependence, superposition and entanglement. This wiki provides documentation of the features and capabilities of the mod. For a thorough tour of what the mod can do, check out this overview from Direwolf20. You may also want to check out the qCrafting series of videos on the mod's official YouTube Channel.

A terrific list of MC Mods via the Google User Group.

I recently returned from a holiday in Orlando, Florida, where I was privileged to be able to attend "Minecon", a convention for the popular sandbox game "Minecraft", developed by Mojang AB. Personally I'm a big fan and long term player of the game, and I'm amazed at how this 'phenomenon' has swept across the world.

Great Britain recreated in Minecraft using ordnance survey data.

ComputerCraft is a mod created for Minecraft by dan200 that adds Computers, Monitors, Modems, Turtles and more! ComputerCraft's Computers and Turtles are programmed with the easy-to-learn Lua programming language. You can use Redstone, RedPower or even MineFactory Reloaded alongside with your devices for the best experience.

Join the Institute of Play google hangout or check it out after the fact.

"Teaching Scientific Concepts Using a Virtual World - Minecraft"

This video (clocking in at 1 hr. 41 mins) provides details about how to use the Custom NPC mod and navigate and utilize the tools associated with the different tabs.

Wonderfully written reflection by an 8th grader on the benefits of MC.

This article features the popular fast-talking video making its way around the web that showcases how Mincraft may very well be "the ultimate education tool." Whether you agree or not, the video raises some interesting ideas. Basically, the Idea Channel folks (who made the video) posit that Minecraft is such a valuable tool because it's so customizable. They talk about how video games have long been used in education but how Minecraft offers a new approach by letting the player construct the game. In other words, a teacher could build his or her own video game tailored to the lessons being taught in the classroom. The students could then enter that custom game and explore, learn, and even build upon it themselves. This blog post editorializes the video and provides both pros and cons regarding the use of Minecraft in education based on comments made about the video.

There's a popular fast-talking video making its way around the web that showcases how Mincraft may very well be "the ultimate education tool." Whether you agree or not, the video raises some interesting ideas.

I hosted my first Open Minecraft Lab yesterday in Robertson Library at the University of PEI. Because one of the goals of the project is to spread word of our experiences, I'm documenting here some of the details of how we set things up, and how the day went. I'll update this next week after we have our second session.