I get asked a lot for advice by teachers about how to get started with Minecraft. But everyone’s situation is a little different given the ages of students they teach, resources available, the acceptance of gaming culture at their school. It’s hard to generalize.

I am, in fact, working on some *not-so-secret-anymore secret resources* that are aimed at helping the largest number of teachers possible. But for right now, I thought it might be useful to share the response I just sent to a teacher asking for some pointers.

Here’s a excerpt from his email:

Joel, I was approached a couple of weeks ago by a couple of students asking about a Minecraft club. The students chose to ask me to be the faculty sponsor when they realized that I too played the game! I currently teach high school math in North Carolina, and was wondering what you would recommend for a high school Minecraft club? Luckily our students participate in a 1:1 laptop initiative, so hardware isn’t an issue. Do you have any advice on the software end? Also, I play on a server, but not absolutely nothing about hosting a server. Lastly, what activities, games, or ideas have you proposed to your older students to keep them engaged with Minecraft in a more educational setting?

And here was my answer:

Hi there! Always exciting to hear from another teacher using Minecraft…

Well, I’ve only just started working with older students. I have a highschool Minecraft club that has only met twice. So I’m trying to figure it all out as I go along, as well.

The first thing that caught me off guard was how wildly different the student’s expectations were for the club. Everyone plays Minecraft in a unique way. Some build, some kill, some can’t play without mod X installed, some hack the game, etc, etc. And of course all the kids showed up with their own ideas of how the club should be run. Forming a consensus has been difficult. I ended up creating a fairly basic server so that everyone had a familiar starting point.

So I’ve been wrestling with what to do next. I’ve toyed with the idea about doing an experiment with government. Each kid that feels strongly about how the club should operate can throw his/her hat in the ring and try to be elected leader (for a term of a few weeks). But that might be too much of a logistical challenge for a club that only meets once per week for 40 minutes. I’ve also toyed with the idea of setting up multiple “settlements” for the kids who want to play different ways. I would make them stay apart for a while, but at some point let them interact and see what happens.

But those are my crazy ideas for social experiments. In terms of more traditional educational uses… I agree that geometry seems like a slam dunk. Architecture would work really well too.

But another thing that I want to try is to encourage the kids to bring their own techie interests to the game. If they like making videos, they can record the game and make commentaries, machinima, tutorials, etc. If they like programming, let them try to make a mod that we all can use. If they like writing, let them start a blog about their Minecraft adventures. There are a lot of possibilities.

As far as running a server… I don’t know how technically inclined you are. I run a server using Craftbukkit from www.bukkit.org. It’s incredibly flexible and powerful, but can be a real pain to get up and running. The vanilla Minecraft server from minecraft.net is a lot easier, but lacks a great many features. There are some great guides on YouTube to get you started with either of these choices.

Also, as an aside… My partners and I are in the process of creating a partnership with Mojang. We actually have the rights to redistribute the game to schools at a reduced rate! So don’t run out and buy a lot of copies of the game without checking with me first!

And a little down the road we will actually be releasing our own server package, designed to help teachers and students get the game up and running quite easily. We’ll have more info on that soon!

Hope that helps!

~Joel