After Roblox was blocked by the school district at the beginning of the school year,  Digital Game Development teacher Ronald Barranco had to find a new gaming engine to teach the curriculum. Though Barranco had plans for students to master Roblox Studio at the beginning of the year, the unexpected ban pushed the program towards Minecraft Education Edition.. 

“I chose Minecraft as the replacement because most students have experience with it, so it’s easy for them to see and understand what we are trying to achieve with coding,” Barranco said.

Using coding structures such as Java, students are following tutorials and developing their coding skills inside Minecraft. Barranco hopes his students can generalize principles and familiarize themselves with these concepts to help them become successful.  

“I hope that my students can learn important computer science programming principles, such as loops, sequencing, conditionals, variables, and functions.” Barranco said “Minecraft Education Edition has a built-in editor that lets students write code for their Minecraft worlds using Blocks or JavaScript.”

The coding language, Java, which makes up most of Minecraft’s code is commonly used and has been the foundation for many popular games. While C++ provides Minecraft with a high level of control, the concept is harder to master for many students.

“C++ is completely different from Javascript, and in my opinion I find Javascript way easier to understand,” sophomore Marvin Chagua said. “We can learn from both, and it will be fun to try something new. Yet I find C++ too intricate and harder to evaluate.” 

Digital Game Development classes will be moving on to more professional game engines later on in the year. 

“My goal is to end this school year using Minecraft for our Digital Game Development II course,” Barranco said. “Next school year, in Digital Game III, students will get experience using a professional game engine such as Unreal Engine or Unity 3D.”