I was very excited about using Minecraft in my classroom, but I was not prepared for the shear level of excitement its inclusion would bring.  As a long time gamer myself, I was familiar with Minecraft, but I hadn't spent any real time immersed in its blocky landscape.  For the uninitiated, Minecraft is an open-world game in which players explore, mine, and add to a world.

The world is constructed entirely from cube-shaped blocks of various material (dirt, sand, stone, wood, etc.).  As the player, you can "mine" these blocks and re-position them into any configuration.  Of course, some enterprising players have created some truly awe-inspiring structures using Minecraft.  The pictures below is constructed from thousands upon thousands of blocks.

My initial concerns centered on the fact that Minecraft is nothing like Call of Duty, Madden Football, or any of the other games my students report to play in their spare time.  I wasn't too surprised to find that a few students had played the game on their own, but I was unprepared for the response of the rest of my class.

I know it's going to sound like exaggeration, but I have never seen students so happy and motivated in all my years of teaching.  The laughter and smiles continued unabated for an entire hour and a half.   In future updates, I look forward to sharing the projects we're working on with Minecraft.

If anyone out there wants to discuss how to use Minecraft in their classrooms, I have been made a true believer, and would be happy to share my experiences in more depth.

I will never forget the summer before I transitioned to teaching high school technology.  I had spent the previous four years in an elementary school teaching math and reading to grades two and three.  I was ready for a change, and I jumped at the possibility of taking my interest in EdTech to the next level.  There was only one problem...what do I teach?

It is the blessing and the curse of teaching technology that there isn't much of a fixed curriculum.  The few documents that do exist (usually in perpetual draft form) are broad and unhelpful.  The textbooks are laughable.  They're the equivalent of reading about basketball in gym class without ever actually touching a ball.  Then again, your typical principal isn't going to pay a visit to my room and ask why I'm teaching what I'm teaching.

So, there I was, facing a brand new subject area and students who were 8-10 years older than the ones I was used to teaching.  Needless to say, I was nervous.  So, one fine summer morning I was walking around Barnes and Noble back when book used to exist as physical objects and you needed to go to a store to buy them.  I came across "Google SketchUp for Dummies."  I came to understand that SketchUp is a free program that was mostly for architecture (no longer owned by Google, FYI).

Architecture was always one of those professions that held a sort of mystical awe for me, as though the people who practiced it lived on some higher plane.  This book made it seem like architecture was something accessible to me, the proverbial common man.  I was transfixed.  Two hours later, sitting in my living room, using the book and the accompanying YouTube videos (by Aidan Chopra and highly recommended), I was creating basic shapes and structures.  For someone who never considered themselves artistic or creative, I was had a powerful experience.  Right then, I knew that one of my units would center around SketchUp.  And so it has for each of the last four years.

The basic premise of the program is thus: you draw flat two-dimensional shapes and "pull" them into the third dimension.  This simple concept has surprising power.  The wonderful thing is that my students have the same reaction to the program as I do.  The typical response to my "does anyone know what architecture is" usually sounds like  "archi-what?"  Before the first period class is out, though, students have created their first house.

The simple house students create in a single class period

I like to include the SketchUp unit early in my curriculum because it helps students understand a few basic tenets of my class:

1. Technology is powerful and allows us to do things we otherwise couldnt' do
   
   
2. You are powerful and can create beautiful things from nothing
   
   
3. Being artistic and creative is so much more than "being able to draw"
   
   

Very quickly, we move from the simple houses to the interiors of the structures.  The kids go crazy for this when they get to decorate the inside of their dream homes.  One of the most fun aspects of this is that the young men especially enjoy this assignment.  I think that's largely because they don't understand that interior design is typically considered a feminine profession, much as the young ladies don't understand that architecture is traditionally viewed as a masculine one.  That being said, here's a nice example of the interior of one young lady's home.

One young lady's interior design project

A closer look at the living room

For fun, we use some of the tools that allow the designer to create terrain.  We talk a little about geology as we do.

A mountainous terrain created by a student

One of most fun way to publish and display our work is by using a SketchUp plugin that allows us to turn our creations "holographic" using augmented reality.  The video is of me showing off the model of my actual kitchen.  I made that model because we were adding the island in the middle.  The designer and contractor were blown away when I showed it too her.  Also, it was a real world application of what I taught in my class!

The final project culminates with student designing their dream house, both inside and outside.  We use various tools to create cross-sections and live animations to show it off.  Here's a good example (couldn't convince him to change his bedroom decor!).

I simply must show off this image.  It's one of my favorite examples of student work during this unit.  I've lost touch with this student, but I like to think she's on her way to becoming an architect.

As we enter the era of 3D printing, the possibilities of using this technology are endless.  I can't wait to see what's coming next.

One of my favorite student creations