Teaching History Using Minecraft

When you start MINECRAFT you have a choice what type of WORLD you would like to work in - CREATIVE or SURVIVAL

Creative World

•This world allows you to design your world using as many tools as you like - there’s a whole range of tools / blocks at your disposal.

Survival World•When you start the SURVIVAL

option in Minecraft you are presented into a world where you need to SURVIVE.

•You will need Food & Shelter..... to get these you will need to create tools

(1) First step in survival•There are usually some trees in the world

where you can work with. You can cut them down and ‘craft’ some wooden tools. You can also re-plant trees and eat the apples that sometimes fall from them.

•You can make a ‘crafting table’ which allows you to craft shovels, axes and pickaxes, among others. (later in the game You can also craft doors etc.)

(2) Protection• You also need to build yourself some sort of house to

protect yourself from the baddies (the zombies that come out at night).

(3) Better Tools

• You can mine stone with a WOODEN pick-axe.

• Stone is a much more durable product to build your house with.

• Again you can create tools with stone and timber (these prove to be much better/stronger tools than just wooden ones.

• Once you have stone tools you can then mine for other items (coal, iron ore, diamonds, gold etc).

• You can also create a stone oven (which allows you to cook certain items - eg allows you to smelt down iron ore into iron blocks etc).

(3) Food

•You can get food in a few ways.

•You can ‘hunt’ the animals, get their meat and cook it .... except you will soon run out of animals

•You can cut down trees and eat the apples

Grow Plants

You can also grow wheat - which will allow you to make bread/cake etc.

Hunt / Farm Animals

(4) Even better tools

•Once you smelt iron you can create yet stronger and better tools (with iron blocks). These last much longer and are stronger tools to kill the ‘badies’ with

So how does all this relate to

Teaching History?

History•So far we’ve seen how early

civilisations develop - moving from wooden tools, to stone tools, to Iron and coal.

Defense•Once you are used to using the tools

etc. in Minecraft you begin to turn your thoughts to better defense of your homestead.

•You tend to build tall walls around the ‘house’ for better protection. You can put lava or a moat between the outer wall and the internal one for better protection.

•You can design lookout towers and turrets for better views of your world

Second Year History•For all this you need more fuel - wood or

coal. Coal is better so you need to mine more and more of this.

•When down in the mines you’ll find yourself sometimes getting lost, sometimes getting flooded when you hit water, and sometimes hitting lava!

Second Year History

•You can create train tracks and have minecrafts act as trains to tour your world .... of course you need Coal, Iron and Wood to make the tracks

Social Consciousness•You soon discover that if you don’t

re-plant the trees you will run out of wood quickly.

•You also discover that it’s better to ‘shear’ the sheep for its wool rather than killing it.

•Its better to keep the chickens alive and eat the eggs instead of killing the chicken for a once off feast.

•You can grow wheat, make bread, cake etc for more variety of food.