Information from my MACUL2014 and ITEEA 2014 Conference presentations about the Raspberry Pi and Minecraft Pi Edition can be found on this page.
You can also download my full presentation from MACUL (34.3MB, PDF file). Also, you can see photos and tweets from Twitter users who attended my MACUL presentation!
Raspberry Pi links
- What is the Raspberry Pi, Anyway? (an overview by MAKE Magazine)
- The Raspberry Pi Foundation (creators of the Raspberry Pi)
Minecraft Pi Edition links
- Honey Creek Minecraft camp (includes daily reflections from 2013 camp)
- Download Minecraft Pi Edition for your Raspberry Pi
- News on the raspberrypi.org site about Minecraft Pi Edition
- The Kano OS is available to download for free, and includes a version of Minecraft Pi Edition featuring block-based program. It holds a lot of potential for providing an easier starting point for programming in Minecraft than having to write Python code initially.
Learning Python on the Raspberry Pi
- Getting started with Python + Minecraft Pi
- Another Getting Started guide, this one from the Raspberry Pi Foundation
- The Stuff About Code site features an excellent API tutorial and the essential Python API reference.
General “Kids Learning to Code” links
- The Hour of Code group has been quite successful in elevating the profile of teaching programming in schools, and they feature a whole set of activities and tools for teaching these concepts.
- The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a nice set of links to activities students might use to learn to code on the Raspberry Pi
- 8 Projects for Hour of Code from Kano
Extensions and Options
- ScriptCraft for CraftBukkit is a plugin that allows programming and making mods for the PC version of Minecraft. It is significantly easier than learning Java (which is required to make mods normally).
#makerED and Professional Learning links
- Andrew Carle is an incredibly thoughtful educator who runs a Maker program. This post does a great job of thinking through what it looks like to work on projects where you or your students don’t necessarily know everything you need at the beginning.
- The K-12 MakerEd site is a great starting point, and if you are on Twitter, the #makerED hashtag is well worth following. There are #makerED chats every Tuesday at 9PM EST.