This evening I visited the EVO_MOOC Minecraft Server and started to explore. There were some interesting builds already in place as well as a village which looked like it was produced through the world seed. The world is flat and is set to Creative mode – though there are lots of mobs around as well. As I had not visited a village before I decided to do just that. I had heard my students discussing trading with the villagers and wondered how it is done. Out of curiosity I right clicked on one of the villagers and up popped a dialogue box revealing that the villager has a particular trade or occupation and that certain items could be traded for. When I looked more closely at the village avatars I noticed they were dressed differently and that this indicated the trade with which they were associated. What an interesting experiment it would be to have students working together in survival mode and building the trading component in to the everyday tasks to be completed by the group. I have seen group dynamics in the adventure game we have played in my after school club and they range from students who like to play solo to eventually become valued members of a community working together to achieve a common goal – survival! I have also seen students develop their skills through helping each other to learn how to create new items just for fun e.g. a trampoline and also out of necessity e.g. armour, weapons and tools. Minecraft can be used across all curriculum areas and it just needs the teacher’s imagination to see the possibilities! My screenshots for this first excursion are here.