We are thrilled to have been one of only 20 organisations in the UK to have been successful in our application to the Power to Change Community Tech Discovery Fund, a new fund to develop new ideas and learn new skills. Our plan is to create a Community Tech Minecraft Server.
What?
From October 1st, we are part of a six month programme to undertake our own discovery work around how to expand our existing Minecraft server to have the capacity and our team to have the technical know how to provide free of charge, on-demand access to a private secure Minecraft world and full training and support to other youth groups, community organisations, home ed groups and schools that support children with SEND and older people with additional needs. We will take part in CAST’s Digital Design programme, Community Explore, and take part in Third Sector Lab’s Open Working and Reuse Programme.
How?
We will develop our existing cloud hosted, expensive community Minecraft server for children and young people with SEND, into a cost efficient, financially self sustainable, secure, safe, open resource for youth and community groups, home ed groups and individuals to access on demand.
By self hosting on a dedicated machine, we can open up private worlds to any groups who need it, create common rooms and mini games for all members of the server to play together in a safe, supportive environment, and expand our current provision to meet the needs of our service users, without incurring increasing monthly subscription costs.
We can host paid-for sessions around redstone, coding, command blocks, literacy, Maths, ESOL in dedicated private worlds, and createopen ‘common rooms’ to allow for socialising and collaborating in a safe,, supportive environment.
We will also be able to offer workshops for parents and community group leaders around Minecraft and safeguarding and online safety, how to play and to talk to your kids about it, and how it supports your child.
Why?
We have seen the incredible impact that Minecraft has had on many of our group members. Increasing self confidence, building friendships between children and parents/carers, providing opportunities for real life meet-ups for online friendships, being part of a wider community, leadership opportunities and giving them a sense of joy and happiness and something that is so much looked forward to every week. We would love to be able to share this with other groups and make it painless, accessible and straightforward for them to get set up safely, in a world with players they already know.
Setting Minecraft up and accessing a server can be complicated depending on how comfortable you are with computers, and its scary as a parent letting your sometimes vulnerable child play online with strangers. I hope to remove these barriers and worries and make it an easy, transparent process with tight safeguards in place, and help parents and group leaders understand how it all works.
My Story
I have organised Minecraft Clubs for children with SEND for several years now with an external provider, I began when I needed a safe place for my own autistic child to play online, to be able to play with other children, and hopefully make some friendships with children who she had common ground with.
I have seen first hand, both for my own child and from what I have been told by other parents, the impact that this safe space to come together over their shared interest, has had on them.
Friendships have formed, between the kids, and between parents as well, and self confidence has grown in leaps and bounds. i have been told that it’s a high point of their week, looked forward to all week, and the happiness the kids feel playing and has an effect on the happiness levels in the whole house.
It’s impossible to describe how important Minecraft Club is to the children, its something very special.
When my external provider stopped providing our server environment, I had a week to come up with the bare minimum for the children to play on together at the next session, as the children need it and look forward to it, and I couldn’t let them down.
I realised that I couldn’t risk, or afford, to be hosted by another external provider and needed to manage the server within my own organisation, so we got a cloud hosted server up and running in time, thanks to the wonderful members of the group who worked together to make it all happen. Now we are able to develop this idea and make it accessible for other groups whose children would like their own private world and hopefully gain the same benefits.
Open Working
Part of the Community Tech Project is a commitment to Open Working. This means that the work done during these six months takes place in the open. We will be open and transaprent, sharing our doings and learnings. By sharing weeknotes/blogging what has been done at least weekly, sharing challenges, results, failures, successes, so that other organisations can see and be informed by what work we have done.
My weeknotes/blog will be recorded here along with links to recordings of livestreams on our Minecraft server.
