{"id":13879,"date":"2020-09-30T12:08:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T19:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=13879"},"modified":"2020-09-30T12:08:35","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T19:08:35","slug":"creative-writing-and-world-building-in-minecraft-education-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/creative-writing-and-world-building-in-minecraft-education-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Writing and World-Building in Minecraft: Education Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Joe Dillon<\/a>, Denver Writing Project<\/em><\/p>\n

As the world sheltered in place during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, stories of youth designing spaces in Minecraft popped up on social media. College students built blocky versions of campus at universities like MIT<\/a>, Cal Berkeley<\/a>, and the University of Southern Indiana<\/a>, and reimagined the events and spaces that had been closed to them by the spread of the virus. These stories likely did not surprise teachers, who undoubtedly have all manner of first-hand experience with young people\u2019s skill and fascination with the sandbox game.<\/p>\n

For me, I first understood the game\u2019s hold on the creative imaginations of students in the summer of 2012, listening to three boys discuss their fascination with the game. I was seated on the Auraria Campus, the site of the Denver Writing Project\u2019s Young Writers Camp, and the boys were climbing in the tree boughs above me while we all waited for their parents to collect them at the end of the day. One of the young men described for the others how he had researched the game for a month before playing with the other kids at his school because he didn\u2019t want to look like a novice. When I asked him what kind of research he\u2019d done, all three boys talked over each other about how they used the Minecraft Wiki and YouTube game tutorials to learn more about the mechanics of the game.<\/p>\n

The intersection between Minecraft, creativity and learning are plain, but how can educators use Minecraft space for young writers to write, revise, and create while they play?<\/p>\n

This was the question Meenoo Rami, a Philadelphia Writing Project teacher-consultant and now a Program Manager at Microsoft, posed to me and NWP\u2019s Christina Cantrill. Seated on the floor of the MIT Media Lab during a lunch break at the 2018 Connected Learning Summit, we were talking about Meenoo\u2019s work at Minecraft Education in the moments between sessions about interest-driven, peer-supported learning. I responded by describing some of the ways I had seen teachers use world-building to support creative writing and thinking in the Aurora Public Schools during some experiments in the classroom and in club spaces after school. The conversation led to a new collaboration between NWP and Minecraft Education Edition.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s acquisition of Minecraft has led to the development of Minecraft: Education Edition \u2014 an educational version of the game with a global reach. Their site offers lessons with accompanying Minecraft worlds, designed for use across the curriculum for all age ranges. With support from Minecraft, I worked with a team of teachers and youth to create 10 ELA writing lessons<\/a> related to world-building. The process of designing worlds and lessons that could support playful writing and learning was challenging, fun, and rich with possibilities.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, collaborating with teachers about writing in Minecraft resulted in unique contexts for youth to engage in world-building. In a post for Minecraft Education, I framed the marriage between Minecraft and composition this way:<\/p>\n

Just as a player logs into Minecraft, in the moment before she begins to dig, build, fly, or otherwise explore, she encounters a screen that offers her the choice to create a new world. \u2026 Think arctic environs with polar bears. Jungles thick with vines where parrots fly from tree to tree. Aquatic scenes filled with coral, sea creatures, and sunken treasure. For a different game experience, a player can also create a flat world devoid of digital creatures, without flora or fauna \u2014 a clean canvas for designing with digital blocks. From the outset, Minecraft asks players, \u201cWhat kind of world do you want to create?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The 10 lessons built were co-created with the help of interested educators and youth; each was imagined as a playful interpretation of a concept familiar in English Language Arts, and each asks players to write and build in different ways. Young writers from the Denver Writing Project not only helped test the activities, but a few of them lent their Minecrafting expertise and aided in the construction of the worlds.<\/p>\n

The NWP-hosted Minecraft worlds now include:<\/h4>\n