This spring at Syracuse Elementary School, in Syracuse, Indiana, I started a Minecraft Club for fifth grade students.

With the help of our school's technology department, a separate computer lab with 15 PC stations ready to run Minecraft was created. Then, the tech department set up several virtual servers that the students would be able to use for multiplayer. This club would NOT have been possible without the help of the technology guys at Wawasee Community School Corporation (Thanks, Ron and Matt!).

Due to space limitations, I had to then take applications for students interested in the club. For the first round of the club, I chose the least-experienced students, either those who had never played before, or who had only played the Pocket Edition on iPad or iPod. These students had not played Minecraft on PC.

But despite the lack of experience with the PC version, the students all quickly took to playing Minecraft with a keyboard and mouse :)

I simply gave the students the objective of creating “something”, some type of structures, etc. of their choosing. They worked in small groups in Creative mode (with PVP turned off) to create a world of their own choosing. The club met once a week after school for 8 weeks.

While their worlds were not extensive, this club session did give the students a chance to work together , to collaborate to create a mutual “vision” using Minecraft. In that, they were successful.

This submission was created by Connor, Calob, Riley and Jackson.  They call it "SmokeyLand".