Using Minetest with young students

[MHL]

Blocking children from accessing outside servers could be done either by:
Easy way: disconnecting all of the computers used by children from the Internet

Hard way: Using a client side mod, or modifying the engine.

When it comes to mods I think that homedecor would be great. It adds multiple types of interior and exterior decorations. Technic and Pipeworks are great too, they teach children about the basics of plumbing and electricity. There are also a few chemistry mods. DISCLAIMER: I have never tested these mods and I'm not sure if they work with the latest versions.

[Yvanhoe]

Homedecor: It is really nice for a creative server. I wish the recipes were a bit more realistic though, I also wish the doors would connect to mesecons in the way the xDecor ones do.

Pipeworks and technic are really great IMO! I would not teach electricity with technic though, it abstracts away too many things. In a typical electricity class, you explain things like voltage, current, power. All these are abstracted away as "energy units" in technic. It could still be used for general things like teaching about energy sources. I wish hydro generators would not allow free energy though.

When it comes to piping, there are a few shortcomings in pipeworks in its water management. I think most people use the transportation tubes more than the water pipes. For water, I ended up preffering the simpler waterworks, that actually preserves the correct amount of water in the system.

Thanks for the chemistry mods! I'll look into it, they look interesting!

[MHL]

I know that Technic is a bit unrealistic, however as you said, it could be used to teach about supply, demand, storing electrical energy, converting electrical energy, etc. There are also a lot of other similar mods like elepower or techpack, they could be used to teach about industrialization, digitalization, etc. Maybe the laptop mod would also be interesting, but it has little educational value, it could only be used for teaching kids about basic computer components + some really basic MS-DOS (CS-BOS) commands, but I suppose most childeren already know that

[leedzman]

Some excellent advice here. Thanks all.

I will report back with how it goes.

[leedzman]

I used Mineclone 2 game in my class yesterday with 17 students, mixed grade 1 and grade 2 students. A few had never played Minecraft (or Minetest) before and the majority had never played on a PC. They were mostly used to playing on touch screens, which I guess is the norm in this day and age.

They mostly had a blast playing MC2! (I told them it's a special version of Minecraft). I was able to leave most of them to their own devices and they were off mining and crafting like pros.None of them suspected that it wasn't actually MC they were playing.

One issue was that only 14 students were able to join in the same world, so I had 3 who had to play single player. Is there any way to raise this limit in the coding perhaps? Or could this be a limitation of the network we use?

The first week was just them learning how to log in, use the mouse/keyboard to play etc. In future I will introduce challenges, such as bridge building or capturing animals (any other challenge ideas welcome. I will try them and report back).

Thanks for the support. It was a good first day!

[Yvanhoe]

One issue was that only 14 students were able to join in the same world, so I had 3 who had to play single player. Is there any way to raise this limit in the coding perhaps? Or could this be a limitation of the network we use?

Oh I did not know there was a limit! It turns out you can change the max_users parameter in minetest.conf and that it is set at 15 by default. Just add a line max_users=50 and you should be fine. Great to know!

I will introduce challenges, such as bridge building or capturing animals (any other challenge ideas welcome. I will try them and report back).

I had some success with orienteering mods, giving instructions to kids to find treasures I had previously buried on the map.