Students run class during Minecraft in Architecture project #Flipped

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After I spent about 3-4 days allowing my students to create Dilated images out of Minecraft blocks, they then prepared for the next part of this Flipped Project

Feel free to utilize these tutorials for you class so that your students can start playing Minecraft with your content

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 I at first wanted the students introduced to the concepts of Minecraft. I myself was very inexperienced, so I had the "Minecraft Pros" in the class lead tutorials to help get their class started. 

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 The students introduced such concepts on setting up their worlds, how their classmates can join the server and much more. Most importantly the process of Minecraft: You need this to build this...once you get that you can build that....and so on.

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 Once the students got their worlds together and recreated dilated/scaled works of art, they were then ready to study architecture

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The next Minecraft lesson allowed the students to create teams of four to five, the only catch was that they couldn't currently sit adjacent to each other so they could capitalize on the networking issue of Minecraft.

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Each member in the team came up with a floor plan for a work of architecture based on their Social Studies subject matter. The 8th graders would design a Colonial Home, the 7th graders would do a Medieval Castle and the 6th graders would do an Ancient Egyptian Pyramid

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 One of the greatest things in the project said, "we should do something like the Crusades where other people in the class attack our castle." I thought that was an amazing idea, so it became part of the project.

1. Spend five days to design a work of architecture based on your Social Studies content. Utilize the small groups created in Edmodo to discuss/collaborate
2. Collaborate together to gather resources, build and survive the night as you are attacked by Creepers, Spiders, Skeletons and other threats.
3. On the 6th-9th days we will begin a Round Robin style tournament where four members of a team will attack your home. One member of your team will remain to host the server and defend their home.
4. The attackers have five minutes to get you. If anyone loses all of their health, they are done. After the five minutes is up and the leader is still there, you advance to the next round.
5. I estimate to do these attacks for three days and then be done with Minecraft. The point is to set up natural defenses, mazes and other obstacles for the attackers, while still demonstrating knowledge of architecture of their content.

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Stay tuned for further Minecraft posts as the students showcase their rerlections, and talk about their observations and challenges with the project.