Creating Lessons

Creating a lesson in Minecraft: Education Edition is not complicated, but it does require some planning. You probably have experience creating lesson plans for your students, now it is time to bring them to life in Minecraft: Education Edition. The ability to submit lessons is reserved for Minecraft Global mentors. You can learn more about becoming a mentor here.

Here is a checklist of things you’ll need to create your lesson.

• Photo
• Title
• Short Description
• Student Ages
• Subject
• Skills
• Lesson Language
• Estimated Time
• Difficulty level for instructor
• Learning Objectives
• Guiding Ideas and Questions
• Teacher Prep and Notes
• Student Activities
• Performance Expectations
• External References
• Supporting Files

There are several locations available to create a lesson, but we will be using the most common: the dashboard method. To reach your dashboard, log in to the website and visit the “Classroom” tab.

• Select “My Resources”.
• Scroll down to your dashboard.

Select the “Create New Lesson” option.

Photo

We provide a few standard photos, but the best way to make your lesson stand out to others is to provide a screenshot within your Minecraft-based (or adapted for Minecraft) lesson world.

Image via Build A Mars Rover – By: Minecraft Education Edition 

Tips to try

• Using Creative Mode, hit SPACE and fly above your world to take a picture with in-game tools or a screenshot utility
• Experiment with different times of day, if appropriate to your world
  • Removing the heads-up display (HUD) with F1 can help with a clear picture.
• Lighting can come from a variety of resources within the Minecraft world. Try being creative with lighting in your world for different results.
• If you have connected lessons in a series, you may want to use similar images to signify they belong together, but it is not required.
• Accepted file types: JPG, PNG
  Image ratio: 16:9
  Image dimensions: minimum 480 x 270
• This image will be cropped on the site, please make sure to center your area of focus in the image

Image via International Space Station – By: Minecraft Education Edition

Things to avoid

• Lots of text in your image – because of the way images scale on various devices, your text may be unreadable at certain resolutions
• Default images
• Low contrast images

Title: 80 Character Limit.

Creating a good title for your lesson makes the difference between lessons that are seen often, and lessons that are hard to find by other educators. They should be specific, easy to understand, and simple.

Short Description: 100 Character Limit.

The description field is kept deliberately short but should not just be the first part of your introduction repeated. It is only seen one time so first impressions are important.

Tips to try

• Use active verbs, for example: “Explore, create, & sustain life on an alien planet”
• You can also try asking a question that is answered by the lesson, such as “Waking up in a strange world, can you breakout?”
• Are you finding it difficult to edit your description down to the allotted characters? Try answering the following question: “If I wanted to tell people on social media (Twitter, Facebook) about my lesson, how would I accomplish this in a short, accurate, and exciting way?” This works because on social media because the limits are quite strict.

Things to avoid

• Phrases like “in this lesson”
• Abbreviations, slang, and other jargon (whenever possible)

Introduction: 200 Character Limit.

Think of this area as a longer description, designed for people who have already clicked through to view your lesson.

You can make a reinforcing statement about your lesson (like in “Climate Change”) or go in depth to elaborate your original short description, for example:

Short description: Explore and create stories in The Baddlands

Introduction: Students can explore the rich story setting and use it as a platform on which to build and develop their own characters, settings, and events.

(example from: The Baddlands, Simon Baddeley)

Student Ages

You can click more than one box here, but if you find yourself checking all the boxes, perhaps consider using “all ages” instead.

Subjects

You can select up to a maximum of three subject areas.
Student Ages and Subjects are currently the filters you can set on the “Find a Lesson” page to filter lessons. Make it easy for your lesson to be found by using them.

Skills

You can select up to a maximum of three skill areas.

Experience Level: You can select an approximate difficulty level of your lesson plan for an instructor to teach.

Estimated Time: You can select the average time to complete the lesson plan.

Lesson Language

This drop-down defaults to English, but we accept lessons in other languages.

Learning Objectives

A well-defined learning objective defines the rest of the activity. You can add as many as you need by using + ADD LEARNING OBJECTIVE. They will show up as a bullet point list in your lesson. Note that you are limited to 500 Characters.

Teacher Prep & Notes: Here you can give teachers and educators a high-level overview of the lesson plan and curriculum, as well as give detailed preparation notes to better organize the lesson. Note that you are limited to 10,000 characters.

Guiding Ideas and Questions

Providing guiding ideas and questions helps provide context for the lesson, and occasionally can provide suggestions for other educators using your lesson. Note that you are limited to 10,000 characters.

Student Activities

This section is designed to outline the exact steps needed by students to meet the learning objectives. Student Activities should also demonstrate or suggest how to use Minecraft to achieve these objectives, and often refer to the supporting files area on the right side of the lesson when published. Note you are limited to 10,000 characters.

Performance Expectations

• How will you measure student success?
• What standards are used to know if the learning objectives are met?

Note: Each of these sections provide you with a rich text editor (so you can paste in your lesson from your word processor), and 3000 characters.

External References

If you have websites or videos that support your lesson, these would be a good place to link those. Please be careful linking to external resources you did not create, as content may change without notice.

Supporting Files

This is where you upload things like .mcworlds (these should be placed in ZIP files), PDFs, and documents. Be sure to describe all of them clearly with filenames that are distinct.

Adding An MCWorld File & Resources

Here you can add your Minecraft World File (MCworld File) as well as external resources like YouTube videos or webpage links.

• World File Name: The name of your Minecraft World File.
• Description of World: This section is to add a short yet detailed description of the world file.
• Upload World File: You can upload your world file here, using the “Upload File” button. Note that the file must be a .MCworld or MCtemplate file.
• External References: Here you can add external reference links such as YouTube videos or links to webpages supporting your lesson plan. You can add multiple references by clicking the “+Add External Reference” button below the fields.

Congratulations, your lesson is now complete! What’s next?

Save as Draft

If you don’t have time to finish your lesson, please save it as a draft and come back to it later. If for any reason you are not finished and have trouble editing, let our team know.

Submit for Review

Once a lesson is submitted, it goes through two steps by our community team.

• First, it is reviewed for completeness, and the links (if any) are tested, and the files are downloaded to ensure they are compatible with Minecraft: Education Edition. Please make certain your files can be used on the supported platforms for Education Edition. Please be sure your email on your profile is up to date, in case we need to contact you about broken links or other missing information.
• Next, your lesson is reviewed by our Curriculum specialists on the team. They will provide feedback if needed to improve your lesson for our world-wide community.

General Tips

• Lesson plans are available for free on the Minecraft: Education Edition website.
• Check your lesson for feedback and make adjustments as needed.
• Be patient and plan in advance! Turnaround time for posting lessons can vary through the school year, although we try to provide initial feedback within two (2) weeks of submission for complete lessons.
• Bringing Minecraft: Education Edition into the classroom takes preparation. Checkout this blog post from teachers like you on classroom management.

We are always looking at ways to improve the lesson submission process, and as educators, your input is valuable to us. Please post your feedback in the product feedback section of the website, or send it to support. Either way, we look forward to hearing from you and seeing your community contributions soon. Thank you for supporting Minecraft: Education Edition!