minetest in a school
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 15:02Like other people here, we are using Minetest in an after school Code Club.
Students, aged 11-16, are very keen to play the game, but our aim, as teachers, is to
give them the experience of creating digital content rather than just being consumers.
I'd be interested in hearing of activities other schools have come up with.
Things we have tried, so far, using Minetest:
While these activities are making digital content, I'd like to do very simple coding as well. Not sure what would work, but we could give access to a command prompt window, experiment with a basic programming idea in lua, say a loop, and then, having seen a command line demo of that, somehow use it in a very simple mod. Say a block that uses a loop to put 'Hey..don't hit me!' 10 times into the chat.
What things are others trying?
Students, aged 11-16, are very keen to play the game, but our aim, as teachers, is to
give them the experience of creating digital content rather than just being consumers.
I'd be interested in hearing of activities other schools have come up with.
Things we have tried, so far, using Minetest:
- Build a house, take a screenshot & then make a ''Here is my house' web page.
- Take a couple of screenshots of interesting in-world places & then make a web page with links
to a page for each place. http://codeclub.sfh6.org/mrh/places.html with a handout: http://codeclub.sfh6.org/resources/minetest/worksheet_links.pdf - Same as above, but with a <select> tag with a little bit of javascript to change a picture.
- Make skins. Our site is all Windows. Paint is unsuitable, afaik it doesn't support
transparency, the problem with this activity has been the complexity of Photoshop!
http://codeclub.sfh6.org/resources/minetest/player_Skinzones_64_32.png - As #1 but a 'Here is my skin' page
- As #3, using a <select> but to show what their friends skins look like. http://codeclub.sfh6.org/mrh/skins.html with a handout: http://codeclub.sfh6.org/resources/minetest/worksheet_skins.pdf
- The simplest possible mods I could think of. Firstly a block with their own design on the face.
http://codeclub.sfh6.org/resources/minetest/worksheet_custom_block.pdf - A block with different designs on each face
- A block that puts a message in the chat when a player hits it.
While these activities are making digital content, I'd like to do very simple coding as well. Not sure what would work, but we could give access to a command prompt window, experiment with a basic programming idea in lua, say a loop, and then, having seen a command line demo of that, somehow use it in a very simple mod. Say a block that uses a loop to put 'Hey..don't hit me!' 10 times into the chat.
What things are others trying?