Educators who are familiar with esports, won’t be surprised to learn that Minecraft isn’t a typical esports title. In fact, if you ask students if they’ve ever used Minecraft to play esports they are likely to tell you that’s not what Minecraft is for! Why then, are we introducing Minecraft Education for Esports?
There are three very compelling arguments for using Minecraft Education for Esports:
Minecraft is a well-established game and students are familiar with playing it. They understand the in-game mechanics and have mastered basics of moving around and navigating. This familiarity creates a safe space for learning new skills and a great a practice ground to fail forward.
Minecraft Education has been designed with special teacher and student features to enable educators to get the most out of learning. It is purposefully non-violent, and doesn’t support the gory elements that you may find in other games. This makes Minecraft Education an excellent introductory tool for students’ first steps into esports.
In this sense it is unique with reference to other esports titles, since it invites players to design, create, build, and code their own game experiences. It is our aspiration for these resources, that once students have become familiar with the game-play (rules and roles), and the game mechanics (scoring, timers, etc), they will begin to create their own esports gaming experiences in Minecraft. This move from students as consumers of games to students as creators of games signifies a transformative shift evident of the high-level creative, critical and computational thinking demanded in 21st century workplaces.
To support this, we have developed 13 different Minecraft Worlds that enable organized, competitive and collaborative play in your classroom. The worlds are categorized under three genres:
These are competitive build battles that take place inside a range of immersive Minecraft environments called Arenas. Teams of two battle it out against the clock to design and build a themed object, chosen by the class, or the teacher. A special feature of these maps is the way in which they invite spectating students to participate in the game by voting for their favorite build. A bonus feature of these worlds is that students are able to 3D print their designs at the end of the battle, if the school has access to a 3D printer. There are six worlds in this genre:
Set in a gigantic garden, where the players are the size of bees, surrounded by huge trees, flowers, a garden gnome and a lawnmower.
Set in an old west town during the California gold rush.
Set in a giant maker space with 3D printers and 3D printed objects.
Set on a barren moon in a glass dome, surrounded by floating spacecraft, meteors and planets.
Set on a fantasy race track on a colorful island of giant plants, mushrooms, gliding goldfish and butterflies, and a rainbow volcano.
Set on huge galleon ships, docked by a forgotten island in the Caribbean Sea and featuring cannons, skulls and treasure chests.
You can download the esports Make and Model content here. Jump to the Make and Model Playbooks here.
The Make and Model series will be the first in the Minecraft Education Esports package to be released. Make & Code, and Creative Clash coming soon.