Minecraft Club Analysis

Two years ago, the librarians at my high school asked me to assist them in the creation of the Minecraft Club, utilizing an educational server. During the two years, while officers were not elected, I was the unofficial president of the club. I learned specific skills in relation to coding machines so that would enable others to learn. I learned how to create quests that sent the other players into areas they would not normally go in the game; along with making a 2:1 replica of the Maze Island from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" with giant robots. The purpose of doing this was to prevent challenges within the game that required communication with each member of the group. I believe that our educational Minecraft Club, fostered not just personal and social skills in communication
that needed to be strengthened to survive out in the real world, but also learned to problem solve a variety of conflicts. One of our greatest hurdles within the group was a player that is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. This individual lacked basic social skills to communicate her needs in a manner that was socially appropriate along with the inability to follow the rules that were created by the club members in and out of the game. We all struggled with how to see that the individual’s actions were because they had not been taught or learned the skills to communicate effectively with others. As the identified president by the other members of the group, I had the opportunity to strengthen my own social skills and problem solving skills. I had to learn when to react and when not to react to the individual.
I had to seek out the appropriate adults to help with a variety of situations with this person so that situations could be not only resolved but prevented in the future. I feel that we were all given the additional opportunity to learn to read situations with other members of the group as to when we needed to compromise in order to reach a solution that was viable for all and not just one. While the Minecraft Club was part of the coding curriculum for our District, in the spring with the internet would slow to a crawl for state testing, students outside the club came to the conclusion that it was because of the Minecraft Club and not the infrastructure of the District’s networking that was slowing the internet down. As a small group, we came under attack to the point of that a group of students actually started a petition to have the club disbanded. It was difficult for a small group of five to battle a campus student body of approximately 1700 students. At first, we were all very angry but as we started to reach out to specific adults to assist us in how to handle being a minority on the back end of vocal majority, and a vocal majority that did not have
their facts straight. After being coached by our sponsors and a couple other adults, we were able to answer questions by people about the club and explain that the club actually functioned on an in house server that didn’t even utilize the wi-fi network and could not slow down the network. The fact that we simply learned to face a negative backlash and not respond with our first thoughts rather than provide solid facts with a calm demeanor made all the difference. Because of having Minecraft in our educational environment, a small group of individuals were able to improve our communication skills, problem solving skills, and tolerance of others will make a difference in the future as we move into higher education and employment.