Minecraft builds are created by placing one block on top of another, but it’s redstone that can really bring it to life! Redstone is the electrical circuitry of Minecraft, and learning the essentials of redstone will allow you to create incredible moving pieces to your builds, from traps, to teleports, to secret passages, to minigames, while fostering essential problem-solving and critical thinking skills that are essential in many different careers today.

In this class, aimed at experienced redstone builders who want to bump up their skills, we’ll be learning about the engineering concepts behind some more advanced Minecraft redstone circuitry, and create some more complex circuits using these new skills. We’ll also be enhancing these skills by learning some of the essential coding and commands for Minecraft builders. Then, we’ll travel to our shared world to work on putting these new building skills to work in our epic Minecraft bases. If you have taken this class before, we will be covering NEW content that you can add to the bases you created last time!

Each 1.5-hour class will be broken down into 2 main sections:  

1. 30 Minute mini-lesson on an element of Redstone for Intermediate/advanced students, including:

• New target block mechanics
• Command blocks
• Logic Gates
• Complex Farms

• Item sorters

2. One hour in our shared world to work on our redstone-powered bases.

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By the end of this course, students will....

• Learn the foundations of advanced redstone circuitry, including logic gates.
• Learn how to combine basic elements into more complex circuits
• Learn commands and command blocks to help speed up builds and create compact circuits
• Apply design thinking and problem solving skills to automate elements of their Minecraft bases.
• Use creative thinking to determine how to apply different types of circuits to solve practical problems.

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Students must have taken Redstone Engineering Basics OR have equivalent Minecraft engineering knowledge and skills, including:

• How to create a NOT gate
• How to use dispensers to create a simple farm

• How to use repeaters and comparators
• How to use activator rails, detector rails, and create rail junctions
• How to create and use a hopper clock
• How to activate redstone circuitry using observers
• How to create basic automated farms

• How to send a redstone signal upwards and downwards using redstone ladders

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Students will be provided with all course material during each lesson, as well as their own personal section in our Class Notebook, which they are strongly encouraged to use for planning and reflection.  Students are expected to have a high-speed internet connection in order to conduct effective online classes.  Each student should come prepared with a notepad and pen, as well as a growth mindset!  Students are encouraged to have their own testing worlds to test their designs in between sessions on the group server, and to watch and learn from experts to enhance their own skills in many different aspects of design and engineering. Students WILL be required to complete one short assignment on their own time and in their own world in order to gain access to commands and command block authorization.  If students are using Macs, screen sharing must be enabled for Teams and Google Chrome.