Using Minecraft to create and explore ideas

Throughout our Abstract Sculpture Unit of learning Year 8 Visual Arts students have been using Minecraft to generate their work. Minecraft is an open-ended ‘sand box’ game, where students can create, explore, collaborate and be experimental with their imagination. Its a game, where students can build and design structures. Using Minecraft in class students explored their creative thinking and geometry skills in creating structures within a 3D virtual environment. Below are the learning objectives of our Sculpture park.

First we commenced the Unit with creating 3D drawings of our intended geometrical shaped sculptures. From this students had the opportunity to create this work virtually focusing on the sculpture elements of mass, void, space and gravity. All students were online at the same time and created the work in a purpose built sculpture park. They collaborated, destroyed, built, re-built, and made some amazing works. They used signs to post feedback to each other on their works. It was a fun project which will open up many more opportunities to use Minecraft to collaborate and create some more challenging projects. The next step is to collaborate with another class around the globe.

When students are given control they can produce wonderfully creative things. Making learning deep with Minecraft! Check out Piper’s finished video.

Students had to create a finished video which explained how they used sculpture techniques in their work. The videos were created and edited on their iPads. 

Here are all of our amazing sculptures in Minecraft 🙂

Head over to http://minecraftedu.com to find out more of how to get minecraftEdu into your classroom. Its easy and so much fun!

About MinecraftEdu

MinecraftEdu provides products and services that make it easy for educators to use Minecraft in the classroom. We make a special version of Minecraft specifically for classroom use. It contains many additions to the original game that make it more useful and appropriate in a school setting. We also offer a cloud-based solution for hosting Minecraft classroom servers so students and teachers can connect and play together. We also host a library of lessons and activities that are available for free, and there is a vibrant, active teacher community exploring uses of Minecraft in the classroom. Over 5,500 teachers in 40+ countries have used MinecraftEdu to teach subjects from STEM to Language to History to Art.

My how to guide for setting up MinecraftEdu in your classroom.