Fundraising

I'm still waiting for the game licenses from MinecraftEdu, so things haven't moved forward much as of yet. My plan is to teach a Minecraft after-school class starting in five weeks. That class, part of the after-school program at my school, will serve as a sounding board before I launch the actual class itself. There are two main issues I hope to resolve through the after-school class: How to differentiate for the 'experts' and novice gamers, and any and all technical issues that may arise. Particularly since many of my after-school students are experience Minecraft players, it will be a good venue to run smaller modules and experiments.

In the meantime, let's talk money.

Minecraft isn't cheap. Even excluding hardware, if you go through MinecraftEdu, 25 game licenses and their custom mod come to $376. I was able to raise around $100 more than I requested. The surplus will either go toward more licenses or a wifi router dedicated solely to running a Minecraft LAN. I'm going to keep it in my back pocket until we start running it and see whether the router is necessary.

I fundraised by working through Paypal. Some other options are Donor's Choose or Kickstarter. Below I've outlined the pros and cons of each.

Paypal
A 'Donate' button from Paypal is probably the easiest and most straight-forward method. It's also the one that requires the most trust from your donors. As far as I know, there's no way to display a tracker for how much money has been donated. I updated my blog with the current total once a day but, again, this relies upon the trust of my donors. You can learn how to use Paypal for donations here.

DonorsChoose
DonorsChoose is probably the go-to site for educational fundraising. The only problem -- Minecraft isn't on its list of trusted suppliers. If you want to raise money for Minecraft through DonorsChoose, you have to have already completed at least three other projects through the site.

Kickstarter
Kickstarter is probably the other well-known fundraising platform. Kickstarter focuses on creative projects with a specific output -- documentaries, murals, computer games -- as such, you'll need to get creative and thorough with your Minecraft project proposal to have it approved. Here is an example of an educational Minecraft project that was approved and successfully funded.

I'm sure there are many other ways to go about fundraising, but those are the three options I explored. I'd love to hear other ideas.

Hopefully my post next week has good news about moving our project forward!

The plan & the pitch

Hello, world!

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts documenting the work of my students and I as we explore the use of Minecraft in the classroom. I have a lot of excitement, a lot of plans, and an incredible amount of support from my school staff and administration. This is a project everyone hopes to see grow from a dedicated class to an educational tool that can be used across the curriculum

Before that can happen, though, we need to actually purchase the game licenses. A classroom set and the educational mod developed by the folks at MinecraftEdu will cost a total of $400. Before we can implement, before we can use a video game to construct a castle using Boolean logic, reenact the Hunger Games, or learn about the struggles of young civilizations by creating our own, we need to raise the money.

You'll see a donate button on the right-hand side of this page. Please, donate. I will remove the button as soon as we've raised the $400. If we raise more, we can buy more licenses and more kids can use the program simultaneously. There is, of course, something in it for you, and I don't just mean the joy you'll get from reading these posts and watching the videos I upload. Donate $25 or less and we'll name a monument in our world after you. Donate any more, and you get a town named in your honor.  The sooner we do this, the sooner my 7th graders can begin exploring.

So here it is: the pitch. 

For students to grow truly engaged and curious about learning, the content must connect directly to their lives. Traditionally, this hook would be an outside speaker or a discussion about how the material affects the world around them.

One of the most powerful hooks, however, is also one of the most frequently overlooked: Video games. Games are pathways into other worlds, playful windows into which one can disappear for a while. They are chose-your-own-adventure par exemplar.

And then there is Minecraft. Minecraft doesn't just allow students to explore worlds, it encourages students to create them. Players become architects, engineers, hunters, farmers, artists, sociologists, storytellers and world-builders.

Minecraft is often described as a "sandbox" game. Much like in a playground sandbox, the only creative limitation is the creativity of the students themselves. And much like a playground, Minecraft acts as a microcosm of wider society. Yes, players construct castles and fight zombies.
They also learn to work together, to compete healthily, and to examine how their world is structured.

In my 7th grade classroom at New Los Angeles Charter School, my students will use Minecraft to learn about themselves, their world, and the rise and fall of civilizations, both ancient and modern. As they play Minecraft, they will intuitively explore how civilizations grow, falter, and co-exist alongside explorations of electrical engineering and logic systems.

I am developing a two-month course, during which students will create their own resource-driven society and then interact with the societies developed by other classes. They will face a stark choice -- interact and work together, or collapse.

The use of Minecraft will extend beyond this primary two-month course.  An after school club will be developed and Minecraft will also be used to convey specific concepts in core classes. These concepts can range from the development of trading routes in ancient Ghana to electrical switches to the architecture of ancient civilizations.

We will document this entire process through a class blog that will include postings and videos by both myself and the students. At its culmination, the entire project will be compiled in one comprehensive guide to using Minecraft in the classroom across curriculum. 

By the end of the school year, the 7th grade students at New LA will have used Minecraft to create and develop their own robust civilizations and world. Through Minecraft, they will experience a holistic and hands-on exploration of concepts that are simultaneously academic, societal, and moral.

Our culminating output will be twofold: The world the students create and the documentation of the project itself. The world will reflect what happens when 100 12-year-olds are given the power and the freedom to create and grow as they see fit. The blog of this project will ultimately function as a template for other teachers looking to either have a dedicated Minecraft class or simply incorporate Minecraft into their core subjects.

Our computers are in carts like this: