Minecrafting without Minecraft: A Teacher's Survival Kit

Tech is going to tech. It's the creeping nightmare that keeps us all awake at night: "Will we be able to do the techy thing tomorrow as planned?"

In my day we didn't have much tech... typically just the film projector or later on, a cassette deck or a TV on a stand with a VCR. When they failed, we were told to carry on with whatever we were doing before... or frequently just told to put our heads on our desk and stay quiet for the next 30 minutes! Although the projector overheating and melting the film spool did have a certain amount of entertainment factor! 

Even today, the thought of my favourite cassettes being chewed into oblivion by my tape deck still terrifies me more than any temporary tech outage. 

But, I digress. 

I've been involved with tech in a professional capacity long enough to know it's not a matter of if your tech is going to "bork", but when and how bad... and when it does, classroom management goes into overdrive as you struggle to overcome the disappointment and last minute change of plans. No one likes pivoting; none of us like disappointing our kids, and it can certainly be extra challenging with students that don't react well to unexpected changes. 

So following up on my last post about troubleshooting Minecraft, what can we do when Minecraft won't load (and you don't have a quick solution) or your internet is out? 

Well, I can't fix your tech barfs, but we can Minecraft without Minecraft, and hopefully keep a little of the student engagement that goes with it. That's right! The following are a few suggestions (online and offline) that you can can keep in emergency reserve and pivot to when you're tech is off throwing a massive wobbler: 

1. Pixel Art! Any Painting program will do... MS Paint, Google Drawings, Blockbench but to name a few. If you you have no operational tech whatsoever... graph paper and coloured pencils will do very nicely in a pinch! You can have your students transfer their creations into Minecraft when it's back up and running! 
   
   
2. Design a Maze! Again, lot of programs you can use to draw mazes in, or again, graph paper and pencils in a worse case scenario. Have them design traps or red herrings. Once again, once your tech is on-line, students can build their amazing mazes based on their plans. 
   
   
3. Minecraft... kind of! If Minecraft isn't available, but you still have devices and an internet connection, head on over to Hero's Journey at Code.org or MakeCode Game Arcade. Free tools for coding with a Minecrafty feel! If you're looking for a non-coding related activities, you could build something in Tinkercad, or you could try some skin building in Blockbench (you can check out my video here on the step-by-step process).  
   
   
4. Watch Minecraft Tutorial Videos: Kids love watching and learning new techniques for Minecraft. I'm not a fan of passive activities, so have your students take notes on the videos you show them, and have them demonstrate the techniques they've picked up later when you can get back on Minecraft. Don't know where to find good Minecraft Education videos? You can checkout my YouTube channel or Fantasia Techcraft. Our videos are designed for a student/teacher audience and most everything we cover is for use in Minecraft Education.  
   
   
5. Modeling Real Life! Take the opportunity to have your students start planning and designing their next Minecraft project build. 
   
   Tech: If you have access to Google Maps/Street view or Google Earth, have your kids pick a structure of their choice... could be local, something of a historical nature or whatever suits your needs. Have them take screenshots, take notes, identify real life textures and what Minecraft block they may use, identify specific challenging structure elements and note what they will do in Minecraft to build it.
   
   No Tech: This can be more challenging as you probably won't be able to do a impromptu field trip, but as long as it's relatively nice out, grab some pencils and note paper and head out into the school yard. Real life things you can model from school property: Gardens, interesting trees, sports fields, your school, or maybe houses across the street.
   
   If it's winter and you live in a country that experiences snow... even better. Get outside and start building something with snow kids.
   
   Not winter, or you don't have snow? If you have construction paper, tape and scissors try making cubes from different construction paper colours. Students can add "texture" to the sides and create their own Minecraft blocks, then build a small Minecraft model, individually or collectively. 

Even if your tech is working all the time, you may also be looking for a digital break, so some of these ideas you could use to borrow a little of Minecraft Education's "thunder" and apply it to other activities in your curriculum! 

These ideas are what I've pivoted with over the years. If you have any of your own, please feel free to share them in the comments section... all of us on this Minecraft journey are always looking for new ideas!