New Civilizations à la Minecraft

These past few weeks in Social Studies, students in 2C and 3A have been closing out our unit by using their creativity in Minecraft Education to create their own ancient civilization. They started this project by filling out a plan to include certain elements in their civilization, including their diet, shelters/homes, geographical location, social structure, technologies, art and architecture, and what they are known for. They were also asked to choose a name for their civilization, which they seemed to enjoy. They came up with unique names such as Borgo, Woks, Khose, Oorlewende, Tauklar, and one of my favourites, Fishiens. 

Even though students were asked to be very creative, they were also instructed to be realistic regarding their civilization’s technologies by considering the age or century in which they lived. Because of this, students realized that they wouldn’t be able to include iPhones nor Teslas nor advanced weaponry in their world... It was very heartbreaking for some! Nevertheless, many groups resorted to having discussions and conducting research to verify whether their time period would be realistic with the technologies that they wanted to include. All in all, students had a blast showing off the hard work that they put into their civilizations. I’m pretty certain some of them would have appreciated putting in more hours or weeks into expanding their civilizations, however, we will be moving on with the curriculum by exploring ancient societies such as the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, and Indigenous peoples who inhabited the areas we now call today, North and South America.