Some thoughts to get you set up
I teach K-6 and have Minecraft: Education Edition in the hands of everyone 2nd grade and up. I keep a spreadsheet of usernames (which double as our Google usernames) and their passwords, in case they lose it. I remove users when they graduate or leave and then reuse the slots for the new grade level or new adds during the year.
Students can host from home with port forwarding (though with the new version, there is less need for port forwarding), but I do recommend it for hosting when players are on different networks.
I write and speak extensively about creative/peaceful/always day/no player versus player so that it is clear we are not "playing Minecraft" nor "just killing cows", but instead engaged in an immersive 3D multiplayer real-time maker tool for prototyping ideas to use in other places off the computer -- or that our time in Minecraft together at school is to test ideas from our physical world, perhaps even improve upon something that exists at school or in the community. Of course, we also get into all kinds of interdisciplinary work with extending and exploring the core curriculum.
The esports model for Minecraft is cool and powerful, though it is not the primary function of what I use it for -- instead, I am consciously connecting Minecraft to programming, robotics, design, and interdisciplinary work exploring academics and creativity. For my purposes, esports exists more as a club than a class. That said, I could certainly see class time developing the worlds and physics and programming for an esports Minecraft world. I just have not dedicated class time to survival mode competitions and prefer that that happens in a different context.
I try to speak and write about this a lot with my school community. I want it clear why we are using Minecraft often. I work hard to dispel the notion that "video games make my kid evil". I want the families to really understand what we're doing.
I spend a lot of time also with our Tynker subscription working on Minecraft Mods so the kids can live-program their own version of the game. It's a reasonably priced platform for programming and sharing work. And the mod connection directly into MCEE is seamless and worthwhile.
I reserve a block of users for my use as servers. Since you need a user and a computer to host a world, I dedicate a few computers and login on each one with a separate Minecraft user. Then I share each of those worlds and can now assign students to different worlds or allow them to choose freely where they would like to work. The free choice always works the best. Having my teacher computers hosting the worlds makes things a bit cleaner since I can reliably know that the world files will stay safe and in one spot. Plus, it's cool to have my own "server farm"!
There's a lot to do in Minecraft, as you know. I recommend taking the long view. Have worlds available for many years. Let students revisit their work and the work of their various peer groups over long periods of time so they can deeply engage with drafts and re-drafts of concepts. It's also quite powerful to make the worlds available for their own download at home. Extend the work beyond the confines of school.
This is just some of what is possible with Minecraft. Tomorrow you will have new ideas and then Minecraft grows with you.
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Wonderful suggestions Bryan Sanders (archived)
I so wish we could get an education edition dedicated server so it wouldn't burn accounts to host worlds.
Just Curious Bryan, do you know how to go about setting up more than one "host" on a single network and have them accessible to people on other networks? I can only forward the standard port to one computer. How can students access the other worlds hosted on other computers with different ports forwarded? (I'm sure it is a rattlesnake that would have bit me because I can't see it. As in it is probably simple and right in front of me.)
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"I write and speak extensively about creative/peaceful/always day/no player versus player so that it is clear we are not "playing Minecraft" "
Just one of the basics out of many of your excellent points, Bryan Sanders (archived) and why you are what we used to call "the bomb!" =D Great post!
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Hey hey! :-)
Regarding hosting more than one computer on a remote network, I believe you can use ports 19131 and 19132, thus giving you two. But if you are all on the same network, the sky is the limit!
Keep up the good vibes and the good work, people!
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Regarding hosting more than one computer on a remote network, I believe you can use ports 19131 and 19132,
thus giving you two. But if you are all on the same network, the sky is the limit!Do you know how to go about doing this? Most of my students are remote since we are all homeschoolers.
I can see where, when Joining a world, one could put in a ip address and port. But I don't know how to configure that for the hosting computer? The way it is set up right now, my son's computer is the one with the port forwarding set up. But that means that if I want to make a Multiplayer lesson world. I have to have it finished and tested, then pack it up and install on his machine before I can invite the other students to check it out. Either that or change the port forwarding back and forth all the time which is problematic too.
I would prefer to keep the lesson world that is under development on my machine till it is finished but I would also like to test it out with more that just one student before I declare it safe for multiplayer AND completely finishing development could take a while since there are around 2500 files or operations that have to be gone through to create the 36 week set.
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Development is a messy business!
Happily with the update it is much easier now to export and rename and copy your MCWorld files. You probably are already running a plan similar to this, but what you could do is to name a copy of your World file so that you know which version you are dealing with. For example, if it is your first test run you could call it WorldA, instead of World. (obviously use whatever name you are using instead of World) This allows you to keep developing your original world file, but test the world A file. When you are ready to share out the file to be tested with a small group of remote learners, You can also copy from your base world and rename that world to be world b or world r or whatever it is that helps you the most. Then again export that world and move it over to the computer that works the best for you to host. (if you are just moving files for one computer to the other of course you can just use a flash drive or something. I find the cloud or convenient personally.)
Multiple computers are a real juggle. I deal with multiple operating systems and sometimes I want to just go back to one computer but I can't. I'm required to use a certain computer at work. The struggle is real. :) As I said I'm sure you've already thought of a lot of these things but I think the system will work.0 -
Hay deborah,
When developing a world in conjunction with developing the resource and behavior packs though it isn't as simple as just exporting a copy of the world since the resource and behavior packs in the development folders do not pack up and go with the world since they are still in development and not kept in the world folders (otherwise it would be hard to keep track of which files/folders you were making changes to.)
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So in my searching, it seems I should be able to set up port forwarding so that I could use an external port (example 19135) and my public ip address and have that forward to a particular private ip address on my lan but to port 19132 which should work. HOWEVER, my ISP's gateway doesn't seem to allow that functionality anymore. So short of adding another router into my system (making things more complex with a device I don't actually have on hand at the moment.)
I'm trying to figure out if I can use port triggering to allow access from a different port into port 19132 on this machine on minecraft but testing that is challenging seeing as I can only use students in my tenet that are outside my LAN and available/willing when I'm also available to test this.
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Ok, well the port triggering didn't work, at least not with xfinity.
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Running a quick test with a borrowed router to see if I can use it to change ports. Of course that is probably going to mean I can't use any of the printers on the home network from whatever computer I put behind the extra router.
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Ok, it looks like this might actually work. It is complex, and I don't know how much it is likely to affect performance for those connecting to it, but I was able to have a student from the outside connect using the IP address and the port 19135, which is being forwarded to the internal ip address of the extra router. And then in the extra routers settings I have external port 19135 being forwarded to internal port 19132 at the computer's ip address.
Ugh, so now I have to go put this borrowed router back where it belongs and make sure it is all set. Then I need to buy another router (but I have to make sure it will let me do the port forwarding as above.)
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Indeed, it's messy and usually the solution is peculiar to one scenario -- hard to import suggestions from elsewhere!
But, my understanding is that if you were to tell your router to reserve and IP address for a computer on your network, that you can then map that IP address to the port needed for forwarding and opening up MC traffic. I recommend you do not have shifting DHCP addresses for the host computers or the port forward will not have the correct IP address to map anymore.
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But, my understanding is that if you were to tell your router to reserve and IP address for a computer on your network, that you can then map that IP address to the port needed for forwarding and opening up MC traffic. I recommend you do not have shifting DHCP addresses for the host computers or the port forward will not have the correct IP address to map anymore.
Yes, you are right, that is how it SHOULD work. However, my ISP (comcast/xfinity) has decided to simplify port forwarding so that you can only pass the external port on to the exact same internal port. (they have removed the port forwarding from the router and it has to be done on their web site even.) Yes, I understand that you want to make sure the IP address is reserved for any computer doing any hosting.
So now in this case I not only need to make sure the extra router has a reserved IP with my gateway and all the port forwarding is going through that. I also need to make sure each computer behind the extra router has a reserved IP and I set the port forwarding correctly in that.
Now I suppose I could have gotten any cheap consumer router, but I didn't want extra wifi seeing as all the computers involved are wired in anyway. So I spent a little bit more money and dang, this thing is like a computer in itself and I wish I knew a little bit more about networking so I could take advantage of more of it's capabilities.
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Bumping this up in case it helps someone to get into some new thinking -- and feel free to engage and help me get into some new thinking!
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