What did we learn in the Minecraft Programming Workshop?

On Friday, April 28, the II Edition of the Educational Minecraft Programming Workshop for pre-university students, where the goals were LEARN y ENJOY. With 100% occupancy of the places offered (25% girls, which represents a notable increase compared to the previous edition), students from 14 different HEIs from Ciudad Real, Puertollano, Miguelturra, Villarrubia de los Ojos and Bolaños participated. de Calatrava, aged between 14-18 years.

The workshop was divided into two sessions of 2 hours and a half, for two consecutive Fridays (April 21 and 28 from 17:19.30 p.m. to XNUMX:XNUMX p.m.) and included the collaboration of two third-year students from the Escuela Superior de Informática: Adrian Carrasco Espinosa y Ruben Crespo Calcerrada. Next, we tell you what we learned and how the final competition was.

What did you learn?

During the practical workshop, students had the opportunity to learn about the possibilities offered by minecraft educational compared to its traditional version, as well as learning some of the Fundamentals of Computer Programming such as the creation and use of variables, logical and arithmetic operators, conditional structures and loops, mainly. During most of the time the students had to face various challenges where they had to put into practice the knowledge they had acquired.

Part of the programs created could be launched later by means of commands, or be assigned to a robot associated with each player. In Educational Minecraft each player has an associated agent which can be endowed with behavior by coding programs.

final competition

It's time for the truth. Finally, the workshop concluded with a build-destroy competition between two teams (we were inspired by a well-known Nintendo Switch game – Splatoon). To do this, the students were divided into two groups and a different construction material was assigned to each of them: a red team and a blue team. The assigned materials were red and blue wool, and dynamite to destroy. Both the students and their programmed robots were free to build and destroy in a common Minecraft world.

The groups had to meet with their captains (ESI students) to determine strategies and, of course, end the reflection session with a rallying cry that would intimidate the opposing team 🙂

Subsequently, the students they had 20 minutes to program their robots according to the strategies agreed upon just moments before. During this time, the members of each team could coordinate and even share code with each other. The programming of the robots was essential because they had to work automatically at the same time as the students in the competition.

after this time started an exciting competition, with a duration of 30 minutes, in which the world was dyed in different colors at a very fast pace. It was incredible to see how they applied the knowledge acquired in such a short learning time. In the following image you can see the appearance of the shared world during the first moments. Although there is a predominance of the red material, the balance moved to one side and the other at different times of the competition. When one of the teams dominated, the other managed to create code that would destroy or replace the opposing team's blocks.

After the competition it was time for the farewell, in which we gave each student a t-shirt with our lynx mascot and a diploma accrediting the completion of the workshop. We hope that with this workshop we have motivated you to continue exploring the exciting world of programming, which is increasingly important in a world that is digitizing at an accelerated pace.

[+] Information about the Degree in Computer Engineering

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