Tips for Content Building in Minecraft Education

Have you been considering creating your own customs lessons or content? 

Perhaps you just can't find a lesson that connects to your curriculum? Or perhaps you've been utilizing it in the classroom for a while and you've been thinking that you'd like to give content building and lesson planning in Minecraft Education a go yourself? 

In any event, this can be an exciting and fruitful journey of exploring your own creativity while learning a bunch of new skills. However, if you've never done this before, it can also be quite daunting as you may not know where to start. The following article explores tips that you can use to get started creating your own lesson world (or improving one you already have!)

We will not explore in detail any specific tools or techniques here, but knowing what's possible in Minecraft is frequently more important as you'll now know what to research and what terms you need to use. Links however will be provided where helpful, and my next blog will explore the extensive tools that are available to content builders. 

Here are 21 tips to consider when building your first lessons:

1. Dream big, Start small. Don’t get overwhelmed with the possibilities! If it's your first time attempting a lesson build, you may want to dial back the scope of the project and begin with building a small portion or small pilot version of your concept. Remember, you can always go back and expand it as your Minecraft building skills and ideas for Minecraft lessons advance. You don't need to knock it out of the park on the first try. 

2. Enjoy the process. If you didn't enjoy building your Minecraft lesson, there's a good chance no one will enjoy the experience of learning from it (at least in the way you intended). Have fun with your build!

3. Plan ahead! You have a topic and you have an idea. Great! Every great lesson activity starts with these two items. The next stage is planning how your activity is going to play out. 

• Who is your target audience? 
• Will it be linear, or non-linear experience? 
• Will there be a storyline?
• A set of activities? Do you plan to include puzzles or challenges? 
• Will this be a single player, or multi-player experience? 
• Will this be cooperative project in multiplayer, or a single player project experience?
• Will this lesson be competitive? 
• How will you provide important information, expectations and guidelines? 
• Will you require companion materials? 
• Will this be an activity that needs to be submitted for assessment?
• Will students be demonstrating their knowledge through Minecraft or other means?
• How will you assess what the students submit or demonstrate?
• Are your expectations of what the students will do in line with what is possible in Minecraft?
• Are your expectations of what students will submit for assessment in line with their skill levels in the application? 

These are the most important questions you need to answer before developing any lesson world build. This Minecraft Education planning guide will be helpful when planning:  http://aka.ms/meelessonplanner

4. Backup, Backup, Backup! There is no undo in Minecraft and as in any application, files can go missing or become corrupt. Export your world file to cloud storage after every build session, or before you make an important change or addition (such as using /fill commands). Make sure you append the filename with a new version number on each export, so you have a running backup of your progress. My YouTube channel, Outsidetheblocks covers how to export and import worlds from: 

• Windows PC
• Chrome OS (Chromebooks)
• iOS (iPads)

5. Target an audience. A lesson that is designed for Grade 3 to 4 may not necessarily fly well with older or younger grades. A world cannot be everything for every grade (although you can build a world in such a way that students are directed to age-appropriate activities).  

6. Avoid adding too much text. Nobody wants to read Boards and NPC dialogue all day. You can't always escape the need to integrate necessary instructions and information into a lesson world, but there are a number of ways to deal with information saturation before your students start beating their heads on their desks and crying "when are we going to get to actually play!?"  Once students are in Minecraft, they are just going to want to get to the part of the activity that engages them in some way.  

BEGINNERS: Consider leaving most of your instructions out of the game, and putting it in a slide deck and going over it with your class before the Minecraft part of the lesson commences or try spreading the information out into different areas of your lesson world. 

ADVANCED: Use ImageMap and Paint.net (more on this later) to create your own instruction pages that you can import into Minecraft as pictures. Typically, I create a blank canvas in Paint.net 1280x1080 pixels, then enter text in an accessible, easy to read font and size, and add flourishes like pictures. This makes reading a whole lot easier (although immersive reader won't work with this). Adding pictures can also add much needed context to written instructions and make them a lot more engaging and eye catching. 

Additionally, it's possible to record your own audio instructions and import them into your world using resource packs.

7. Staying Motivated. As you build, you're probably going to run into situations where you can't figure out how to make something happen (could be redstone or command block related), or you may have an extensive build ahead of you where you need a lot of structures. Give yourself a realistic deadline to complete a version one of your activity and take lots of breaks. Sleeping on a problem will often pay dividends (many times a solution to an approach has come to me in the middle of the night!). 

8. Put the Minecraft in Minecraft. Balance your Build. I call this my Minecraft Build Success Trident: 

• Is your build aesthetically pleasing? In other words, does it look nice; is it a world that your students are going to want to visit?

• Is your build FUNctional? Do students have something they can demonstrate through a build? Are there puzzles, build opportunities or other interactive elements they can solve AND have FUN doing so? 

• Is it connected to the curriculum in a meaningful way where students will absorb the subject matter in an experiential way?

I've seen many builds that go for broke on only one of these categories, and from experience, this does not make for an enjoyable experience for the students and derails an opportunity for learning. When a student finishes your activity, what you should hear is "I want to play that AGAIN! I have a bunch of new ideas I want to try!"

9. Was it a memorable experience? Is it re-playable? Not every lesson world you build will need to be re-playable, but as in the point above, it should leave your students wanting more. When I hear "I want to play that again!" or "Do you have any other worlds like this?" I know I've done a good job. 

10. Students love to explore! Where possible, consider adding elements beyond the scope of the activity that students can explore and engage with that also may provide additional context for the subject. For example, if you have an activity that is set within a neighbourhood consider adding homes that students can walk through and explore. 

It may not always be possible to avoid "dummy" structures (ones with no interior or function and are there simply for aesthetics), but I always try to ensure the exteriors are complete. 

11. Get to know Survival Mode. Start your own survival mode game, learn how to survive your first few nights, and then build a self-sustaining base, with food sources, storage, and material processing capabilities as well as exploring the Nether, and crafting potions. Why is this important? One, you'll be able to speak the same Minecraft language of the target audience for your world builds, and two, survival mode will immerse you in a different playing/learning experience, where you will develop different skills sets that will become important when designing your own lesson challenges in Minecraft. 

12. Get to know CREATIVE mode. Start your own creative world, somewhere you can experiment with ideas. This world is about you and your imagination and where it can lead to as you develop skills. It does not need to have an end goal in mind, although many seeds may bear fruition here that could be copied to worlds you develop for later lessons. Start by building something you've always wanted to build, maybe it's a small town, or a historical site. Return to the world frequently to improve it as you learn new ways of building things. 

13. Play lots of other games! I’ve been playing video games since the Atari 2600 and the Commodore VIC-20 came out (I’m dating myself here) and board games equally as long. In retrospect all those years I thought I was “playing” I was actually learning invaluable skills, insights, and gaining experience which has been critical to how I approach content building. 

14. Every holiday is a Minecraft research opportunity! While online search engines, AI and tools like Street View are invaluable in providing you with information, insights, and a 3D view of environments or buildings you may want to create in your world, nothing is better than being onsite on a real-world location. Whenever you’re visiting an interesting location or experience, take lots of pictures and notes! I frequently take close ups of doors and walls… textures I may want to use in my own custom blocks! 

15.  There are SECRET BLOCKS?? That's right, Minecraft has blocks that are not available through the regular creative mode inventory, and you must use /give commands to give them to yourself. The complete list is available in my video, here. 

16. Leverage in game tools! Take advantage of NPCs, slates, posters, boards, signs to add descriptions, notices and create stories.  Allow, deny, border blocks (available in the creative mode inventory), as well as immutable world and permission level settings can help you set limitations on where your students can go and what your students can modify in your world. 

Students are nothing if not crafty and inventive. They can frequently escape the confines of areas protected by border blocks. Check out my video here on how to prevent that!

17. Step outside your comfort zone! Spend some time to exploring how to use: 

• Redstone - This link will take you to the official Minecraft Education 401 lessons on redstone. It's a good place to start.

• Commands - The best place to start looking into commands is digminecraft.com. These can be used with command blocks. 

• Command blocks - There are a ton of videos on YouTube on command block basics. 

• Structure blocks - These are a secret block you can use to copy objects in your world easily or even between worlds. 

• Resource and behaviour packs (Cleverlike studios has some amazing tutorials on getting started with these).

There are many paths in content building, and while you may not need to explore all of these for what you have planned, it’s worth taking a quick peek to see what’s possible for future builds. 

18. Free Tools, Resources! If you started as a Minecraft survival player, your instinct when building worlds is going to be "one block at a time". The magic that is Minecraft is that there are many vectors to success. There are a ton of FREE community tools to help you build things faster or provide more options. The trick here is to balance detail with efficiency and when to use tools, and when to kick it old school, and place block by block to get the level of details that you want. Here are just a few of the tools I recommend starting with: 

• ImageMap - This tool allows you to import .jpg or .png image files into Minecraft, by turning them into map items. When you open up the world, you’ll be provided with a chest of maps which you can then attach to item frames in numerical order to construct the image. Check out my video on how to use the tool!

• Blockbench – a tool for creating custom Minecraft entities, skins and blocks. You can use it to edit existing models from Minecraft Resource packs, or build you own. Be sure to add the Minecraft Entity Wizard and the Minecraft Block Wizard from File>Plugins.

• Paint.Net – A quick easy editing tool for creating or editing images. It has a few more capabilities than MS Paint, but is lightweight compared to Gimp or Photoshop.

• Amulet - Amulet is world editing software which allows significant control over creating or editing worlds quickly and efficiently. You can fill or delete large areas quickly, copy and paste structures in the world or between different worlds. It’s also useful for converting worlds from different editions.

• Digminecraft.com – This website is the go-to for getting started with commands and command blocks. It’s a treasure trove of all the commands available in the various incarnations of Minecraft, and while it won’t provide all the potential implementations, it’s extremely helpful in understanding what’s possible with commands. 

• Chunker - This is a great online tool for converting worlds between Java, Bedrock and Education edition. Quick and easy to use. 

For more information on tools, I'll be publishing a comprehensive blog article soon on all the tools I use for content building!

19. ALPHA and BETA test... A LOT. You're going to need people to test out your world (ideally people of the same age as your target audience). What adults think is a great lesson world may fall utterly flat with students. If students are bored by your build, they're bored and the fact that it's being presented in one of the most popular video games of all time won't help in the slightest. Additionally, student beta testers are the most honest… in fact, their input, and opinions will be BRUTAL, but very enlightening. You don’t necessarily need to make all the changes or improvements they suggest, but their feedback will be invaluable. 

That said, adult testers will typically be better suited at checking your curriculum connections. 

20.   Don't be afraid to ask for help. No one who has done content building has gotten to where they are on their own. There are many Minecraft Education Ambassadors or Mentors (myself included) that have learned much from others, and like to "pay it back" by assisting others. Among the best places to start asking questions are either on the Minecraft Education Teachers Lounge group on Facebook, or the Minecraft Education Support site. 

There's also a number of great Discord groups you can join as well to connect with expert content builders, such as: Play Matters, Minecraft Education, Bedrock Commands Community, and Blockbench to name a few.

21. Never consider your finished lesson world "done". Whether you’re a student, an educator, or a content builder, the fact is that Minecraft is a journey of learning and we’re all students. Over time you’ll be inspired by other builds, you're going to learn about new tools, gain new skills or insights, or imagine better ways of doing things and you will want to improve your lesson world in all sorts of ways. Your first finished world should always just be "Version 1.0". 

No Minecraft build is ever truly finished; it's just waiting for your next inspiration.