Minecraft has been a long-standing popular game in which players have the ability to create anything they can think of within the world of the game. Chicago Public Schools is putting this creative force to good use by asking students to create within Minecraft using various prompts to do so.
Here I speak with Rene Anaya, Technical Support Coordinator for the Computer Science department for Chicago Public Schools, about how the Chi-Craft after-school esports initiative came to be, how it supports both students and teachers, and how more schools can become involved.
Just a Humble Mine in the Chi
Because of its opportunities for creativity and problem-solving, Minecraft has seen innovative use in the educational space, particularly in the form of Minecraft: Education Edition. Anaya says Minecraft’s appeal and accessibility is part of what’s driving its use on the Chicago esports scene.
“All Chicago public schools, students, staff, everybody, as long as you have a CPS email, you have Minecraft Education for free,” says Anaya. “We’re utilizing this free platform on a number of different compatible devices that CPS allows us to use. So it works on Chromebooks, iPads, the oldest Windows and Mac machines.”
The Chi-Craft esports initiative has gone from 20 schools to now more than 70 schools participating, including 700 students. It’s a battle of the builds format, but with a Chicago flair, during which teams have four build-and-present challenges that they must complete over a four-week timespan. Entries are then judged on a 110-point STEM-powered rubric.
“We now call it ‘Chi-Craft’, a combination of Chicago and Minecraft,” Anaya says. “The competitive aspect is that we build challenges that we send out. It’s like a creative writing prompt, except they are to interpret it in a Minecraft world.”
The event was partially inspired by New York City’s Battle of the Boroughs Minecraft challenge. Many other schools have similarly used Minecraft to launch esports programs.
Where Do Challenges Lie?
Chi-Craft has been taking Chicago by storm, and many students have already submitted amazing pieces of work to compete with others in the yearly event. But as more students and teachers become interested in joining, Anaya says the focus is to help grow the scale of and support behind the initiative.
“One thing that we did that we didn’t do last year was we weren’t funding teachers,” says Anaya. “So that may have helped to increase our numbers. Here in CPS, we had some budget cuts, and that was to a lot of our school activities. So we wanted to incentivize [the program]. We wanted to tell teachers that we had their backs.”
Teachers and coaches are provided professional learning from partners, including the New York City Public Schools and Microsoft, as well as tutorials, documents, Google Classroom, and available office hours. Support is also provided via formats such as chats, Google meetings, and school visits.
Another obstacle to tackle revolves around equity.
“We don’t necessarily have a disparagement of race,” Anaya says. “Chicago is a very diverse city. But we do have inequity in esports. [Some believe] it does a bad job retaining female and non-binary students. So we notice it. As it goes with age, a lot of our younger girls are still interested in Minecraft. When they get older, they feel that esports is not their space. So we partnered with GirlsWhoGame [to help combat that].”
How to Throw Your Hat Into the Chi-Craft Ring
Getting your school involved in Chi-Craft isn’t as complicated as you might think.
First, schools have to choose between using their own funding to run the esports group on their grounds or applying to have Chi-Craft fund them instead. The school would then have to get two to five students to join the esports team, and complete the proper paperwork to register the team.
“Make sure you pick out a snazzy name for your team!” Anaya says.
One important thing schools should do in order to participate is to make sure they have Minecraft on their devices and that the devices can run Minecraft well. As long as those criteria are met, Chi-Craft can send participating schools the build challenges and they can get started.
Chi-Craft is proving to be a wonderful way to get students involved in exploring their creativity while building interest in social connections and interest in the world around them.