Museum Minecraft: Rocks & Minerals - Guided Virtual or Self-Guided Virtual

Museum Minecraft worlds are immersive programs that allow your class to experience a thorough exploration of a topic using the immersive and engaging platform of Minecraft Education.

In Museum Minecraft: Rocks and Minerals, your students are tasked with helping real scientists at ROM learn more about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks at three different research sites. Along the way, they will encounter obstacles to be overcome using code. Once they have explored all three research sites, students will apply what they have learned by building a museum of rocks and minerals to teach others what they have learned.

While you can participate in this lesson at a self-guided pace any time, anywhere, you can also opt for the additional support of a live virtual lesson. Live lessons to introduce and support each phase of the program run monthly and are streamed to YouTube, where students and teachers can interact with the Minecraft instructor through an interactive form. Additional asynchronous 1:1 technical support is also available if you need an extra helping hand.

Can’t attend live? No problem! In our YouTube Live Format, you’ll be able to pause and play the lesson to go at the pace that’s right for your students. If you can’t attend live, you can still follow along with the recording through the link you’ll receive when you book.

Phase 1 Virtual lesson

The Phase 1 Virtual lesson should be done at the start of the program. It will introduce students to the Minecraft world and provide basic instruction on how to navigate through the world. Together, the instructor and your students will create their first piece of code to summon the Minecraft agent, before moving on to introduce their first major coding challenge. We will also cover how to use the book and quill to document their learning as they move through the game.

Phase 2 Virtual Lesson

The Phase 2 lessons should be done about a month later, when your students are just about finished their research at all three sites. In the first half of the lesson, the educator will use real museum specimens to review key facts about rocks and minerals that students should have learned as they explored the Minecraft world. Then, the educator will demonstrate some tips and tricks students can use when they’re ready to build their own museum.

While the virtual lessons only offered in English for now, you can follow this tutorial to translate the game language into French. We hope to be able to offer French versions of the virtual lessons and bring a fully localized version of the world online in the near future.

Preparation:

Students should be comfortable with the basics of Minecraft, including movement and the breaking and placing of blocks.

New to Minecraft?

We recommend that students are familiar with the basic Minecraft controls taught in the How to Play tutorials in the Minecraft Lesson Library, particularly:

• How to Play: Movement (Keyboard and Mouse / Touchscreen)
• How to Play: Break and Place (Keyboard and Mouse / Touchscreen)

You can also check out our New to Minecraft section on our Minecraft Program Support site.

• Teacher Support Site - Includes walkthrough, troubleshooting, and solutions
• Student site – Includes challenge hints and the Science of Minecraft content
• Museum Minecraft Technical Support Request Form - For additional 1:1 asynchronous support using Padlet
• Minecraft 101 for Teachers (How to play) – Live or recorded webinar
• Minecraft Programs 2025-26 Info Session – Live or recorded webinar

Depending on the examples the ROM Educator decides to focus on, links may include: