Minecraft: Education Edition -- The Basics w/ Tutorial: Volume Walkthrough Stages 1 & 2 (4)

Source: https://mojang.com/2016/01/announcing-minecraft-education-edition/

This article is the fourth post in a series on Minecraft: Education Edition.  Links to earlier blog posts can be found at the bottom of the page.

Ok...Minecraft is installed...I know how to create worlds...What's next?

Play!!!

Let's get some essential steps out of the way:

1. Plug in your mouse
2. Open up Minecraft: Education Edition and log in
3. Select Play
4. Select Create New
5. Open up the world called Tutorial: Volume II

The rest of this blog post will summarize the key ideas found in the tutorial.  They will be presented in order so that you can reference the blog as you work your way through the tutorial.  

Stage 1: Basic moves

Moving around the minecraft world requires a little coordination and practice.  Place your left hand fingers on the A, W, and D (and sometimes, S) keys.  These keys move your character:

• A: left
• S: backward
• D: right
• W: forward

If these keys are like your feet, the mouse is your eyes, looking around and turning you to face in a new direction.  Coordinating keys and mouse together takes practice, but it will become second nature if you keep at it.  To jump up stairs, for instance, hold down W and press the spacebar.

• spacebar (jump up or swim)

After you have navigated the maze, you will come to a door.  Right-click your mouse cursor on the lever above the door to open it.  Shortly after walking through the door, you will need to dig your way through the dirt wall.  Get close, left click, and punch the dirt in front of you until you can walk through.  Notice that you automatically pick up the dirt blocks as you walk over them.

• right-click (how you use and place objects)
• left-click (how you swing whatever is in your hand to dig, attack, and shoot)

As mentioned earlier, the spacebar is for jumping and swimming.  Think of it as kicking your feet.  If you hold it down you can tread water and swim.  If you only press it once, you will kick once, and then sink.  You can drown in Minecraft, so just hold down the spacebar and use those left hand directional keys when swimming, please!

Next, you approach a wall and you are asked to build stairs.  Notice you are holding dirt blocks in hand, so use those to build.  Just as we used right-click to open the door, we will use right-click to place dirt blocks in the shape of steps.  Now, my game wouldn't allow me to place dirt two tiles away from the wall, so I will show you a handy trick for climbing up to any height.  Stand on the spot you want to climb, use your mouse to face the ground, and jump/place dirt using a spacebar-right click-spacebar-right click rhythm.  Watch this 12-second video, listening for the rhythm:

Stage 2: Crafting

After you climb the vines (W key) you arrive at a tree to farm.  Farming material to build things is the key fundamental in Minecraft.  Chop down (hold the left-click button down) and collect four wood blocks before continuing.

Next, you arrive at the crafting station.  In Minecraft, crafting is a method for taking simple materials and making something more useful out of them.  Using basic materials to build more complex materials involves a crafting table, like a workbench, which you will build right now.  

• E: access inventory

Access your inventory, then follow the steps posted on the signs to first make wood planks and then a crafting table.  Once you have a crafting table, you will also craft sticks and a wood axe by right-clicking on your placed crafting table and matching the posted patterns on the wall.  When you finish each creation, you can left-click and drag it into your working inventory (bottom of the inventory menu).  

Pro tip: You can bypass the placement of materials into the 3x3 grid by simply clicking on the itme you wish to build on the left side of the inventory menu.  If you have materials, they will be automatically placed.  Then, simply drag the crafted item on the right into your inventory.  If you do not have the materials for a particular item, that item is highlighted in red.  Clicking will show you what you need to gather to make it.

Pro tip #2: No need to build multiple crafting tables!  Pick up your crafting table by destroying it (holding down left-click) and then walk over it to add it back to your inventory.

Hammer your way through the stone wall using the wooden axe to move to Stage 3 (and a new blog post!).

Links to our other series blog posts:

Introduction to Minecraft: Education Edition (1)

Downloading and Installing (2)

Creating Worlds (3)

An Open World: Tutorial Walkthrough - Stage 3 (5)

Features Unique to Education - Stage 4 (6)

Launching and Hosting a Multiplayer game + Exporting Saved Worlds (7)