Author: Corinne Espinoza, Interim Executive Director

Dear Friends,

When my third grader and I moved to Cambridge in 2007, I found myself in need of a support system for both of us. He started at Camp Cowemoki that summer, and we have been a “Center Family” ever since. I joined the CCC Board of Directors four years ago, and I was honored to serve as Interim Executive Director for the last year. 

After November 25, 2015, I will return to my role on the Board of Directors. The Board and I are pleased to announce our next Executive Director, Darrin Korte. Darrin brings energy and dedication to the role, and we trust him to care for and steward the Center going forward. Darrin and I will work together to ensure a smooth transition over the coming months. Please be in touch with me at [email protected] or via phone at 617-547-6811 x 10 with any questions or concerns.  While I won’t be at the Center on a day-to-day basis after November 25, I will be answering emails until Darrin is fully on-boarded.

When we enroll children at the Center, we are enrolling families. The Center gave me and my son a community when we were far from family and friends.

It has been such a joy for me to give back to a place that has given so much to me.   I hope you and your family will join me for a celebration about our transition here at the Center on Friday, January 8, 2016 from 6-8pm. 

Sincerely,

Corinne Espinoza
Interim Executive Director
Cambridge Community Center

Author: Connie Cann, Development Associate and STEAM Coordinator

​We’re about halfway through our Summer MinecraftEdu Workshop @ CCC. During the school year, we offer three MinecraftEdu tracks at CCC: Digital Citizenship, Architecture, and Computer Programming.

If you know any children (or gaming adults, let's be honest) you've probably heard of Minecraft. It's a sandbox game that users have used to explore, build circuits, program functional calculators, and create digital communities. MinecraftEdu was adapted by teachers and programmers at TeacherGaming to create compelling and immersive educational experiences through Minecraft. Over five thousand teachers around the world use MinecraftEdu in their classrooms, and have access to a library of prebuilt worlds and lesson plans, including Joel Levin's Escape from Everest.

In Escape from Everest, players start in a bunker beneath Mt. Everest. After working together to navigate to the surface, players realize that Mt. Everest is the only dry spot left on the planet: the ice caps have melted, flooding the Earth and destroying all life forms. The goals of their project are to cultivate new trees on the surface to bring Earth back to life, and produce iron in order to build a rocket to contact other human who are living in space. "However, these goals are in conflict. There is no coal... to smelt the iron, thus they must cut down and use some of the very trees they are trying to grow to burn as fuel. This sets up a social and technological tension which must be navigated." 

Our Summer MinecraftEdu Workshop is focused on architecture. Before starting our Summer project, recreating CCC in MinecraftEdu, our youth spent a few weeks planning. While learning about the importance of blueprints, ratios, and grids, children aged 7-10 watched timelapes of other users building large-scale projects. They practiced recreating structures from around the world, including the Great Sphinx of Giza. We walked around the real-life Center, and afterwards each child built the same corner of the Center in a practice world. Afterwards, we walked around in Minecraft to look at what everyone built, discussing which elements to use in our collaborative building project.

During the summer, our two hour period is broken up into four sections: briefing, working, free-time, and debriefing. We discuss the project, plan for the day, and assign roles before working on the project. After working, children go into their home base MinecraftEdu world, where they all have their own houses within a small city they built together. Last, we sit in a circle, pass around a snack, and discuss what worked well that day and what didn't work.

We still have some landscape, roofing, and interior design to go, but the children are already feeling proud of what they have accomplished together so far. For our children, every MinecraftEdu experience is a lesson in digital citizenship. Every workshop presents new problems to be solved and new issues to be discussed. They make connections to real world topics and skills through their digital experiences, and live in societies of their own creation.

Read our last MinecraftEdu blog.

Video compiled by Connie Cann, featuring interviews and footage of Clinton "CJ" Hoilett, Molly Norris, Akhi Mosley, Jecon Bruce-Sanders, and Imam Firmin.

Music created by C418 for Minecraft.

We are using the CustomNPCs Mod for this project, and we use the ComputerCraftEdu Mod for other workshops.

Thank you to The Awesome Foundation for funding our MinecraftEdu licenses!