The ds106 99: #2 ds106 Minecraft

ds106 has a Minecraft server, how sick is that? If you don’t know what Minecraft is—like I didn’t two months ago, read more about it here. I just spent my first hour in Minecraft getting a tour from the great Noise Professor. Martha Burtis and Mikhail Gershovich have been building away—and we invite anyone interested to come in and play around—just use this server/IP address: minecraft.ds106.us

Martha and I have been thinking about how we might be able to use this for our ds106 Summer courses, and while I am very green yet—it’s 8-bit fun at its finest. The tour with Noise Professor was a blast, and the ds106 monolith he built (featured above) is just further testament to to his awesome. And now that there are a few of us playing on this server it could get fun—I mean the crazy cave Martha started is spellbinding. Such a wild idea of space—I can see why so many are enthralled by Minecraft right now

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11 Responses to The ds106 99: #2 ds106 Minecraft

  1. Jim Doran says:

    This is the balls.

    I can say that here, right?

  2. Emily says:

    Tempy said you were thinking of replacing the getting a domain part of the class with getting minecraft. This would be a bad idea, IMHO. Having a website at least teaches you about owning your own space and doing what you want with it on the web. I’ve played Minecraft. Minecraft teaches nothing about the web, and is basically just dicking around. Again IMHO, the better option for a 5 week summer course would be getting a free blog on whatever blog host, with a bit at the end of the session about how to go about getting a domain if you want one.

  3. Reverend says:

    @Emily,

    Thanks for the feedback, actually Minecraft will not replace the domain/webhost at all. That will still be an integral part of the class. What Minecraft may do, and we are still experimenting with it, is provide a place for the totally online folks to go and play with storytelling in this space. So, ds106 will not lose the core component of the domain and webhost, which is near and dear to me, but it will experiment with Minecraft as a platform for online students to convene—not sure this will work, and it may all be dicking around as you suggest, but I think this sandbox type game to build stuff, and work together in teams, and generally play is very much in the spirit of ds106. The only issue I have is the $20 up front, and that i the question that came up in class—is $20 for Minecraft and $10 for the webhosting for a month too much? Hope that eases your heart a bit 🙂

  4. Emily says:

    Hm. $60 is about as expensive as a textbook, but textbook prices are ridiculous. I’d suggest a cheaper webhost, but if they’re worried about $10 for 4 months, they probably shouldn’t go for a cheaper webhost either unless they know they want to keep their website and are willing to pay $70 upfront for a year (and $100 for every year after that grumblegrumblepromotionalrates). $60 isn’t too much if you actually do use Minecraft for class, at least every week. Probably wouldn’t cause TOO much rioting in the streets.

    Hey, if you didn’t want me having “back in my day” opinions on the future of this course, you shouldn’t go putting ds106 4life at the end of your tweets. =P

  5. Reverend says:

    Emily,

    Let me be clear, I love that you are having “back in the day” opinions about ds106, it proves its for life—and your feedback and input is invaluable. So, keep it coming, the bava is all ears.

  6. Reverend says:

    @Emily,

    Oh yeah, and it wouldn’t be $60, but $40. i figure web hosting for two months ($20), and $20 for the Minecraft account. But like I said, I need to play in Minecraft more to justify this, but I am enjoying it tremendously thus far, so we’ll see.

    What’s more, I am gonna ask them to setup their blog much earlier than when the class actually starts and have them play there for a bit before the class even starts. Hence the two month mark.

  7. Tom says:

    Both kids now have Minecraft. Crazy how popular it is within their school with 5-10 year olds. Now get Timmy to update the server!

  8. Reverend says:

    Tom,

    We are actually trying to run Minecraft through umwdomains.com. We’ll work on that soon, and maybe it is time to introduce Miles and Tess to that world. What do you think, are you a fan?

  9. Tom says:

    Yeah, I think it’s good stuff. Interesting to see them cooperating to figure it all out, watching YouTube tutorials etc. We can do LAN stuff at the house easily enough but a server would be cool.

  10. Reverend says:

    @Tom,
    Awesome, I’ll get on the server post-haste, plus I know of another one in the meantime—I could go for some fun in an 8-bit world. And the fact that it is the 8-bit aesthetic and so popular, kinda like the Lego videogames’ popularity surprised me when I saw my nephews loving it in the 1990s.

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