Minecraft Server

In the academic year 2020-2021, six TY students built a replica of the school in the popular video game Minecraft.

SCHOOL SERVER INFORMATION

To log onto the server, put in the following details, at the bottom of this page, there are tutorials on how to access the server

Server Name: School

Server Address: stcolmcillescs.apexmc.co

​Port: 25600

On November 5th 2020 a call was made to any Minecraft pros to take part in a school Minecraft project. The main goal of the project was to build a recreation of the school inside of Minecraft so incoming first year students can learn about and explore the school before their first day.

What is Minecraft?  Minecraft is an open world video game created by Marcus Person or more commonly known as “Notch”. You may ask why Minecraft?  Released to the world in 2009, Minecraft currently holds the title as the most popular video game of all time with over 200 million copies sold worldwide and is a household name known by hundreds of millions across the globe! This is why it would be a perfect way for new students to see the school. 

In early November 2020 a group of 6 students was put together to commence an ambitious project led by the Multimedia teacher Mr Bates. Build a minecraft model of the school they said, it will be fun they said, and it was!  The group consisted of 6 Transition Year students, David Hopkins, Josh Gannon, Daryl Coyne, Aaron Caffrey, Sean Stout and Rebecca Gillen. The project was to build a 1:2 recreation of the school inside Minecraft. This model would then be used to allow incoming students to explore and get familiar with the school building. Items including photos and measurements of each nook and cranny in the school had to be accounted for. The recreation was going to be precise.

Everything was progressing steadily through November and December of 2020, it was decided that the school would be built at 1:2 scale as a block in Minecraft equals 1 meter in the real world. The foundations were built for the project to go ahead and a “St Colmcille’s World” was created halfway through December. 

Members of the team then began to build the school from the outside in with the measurements that had already been taken. A laser measure device was used to measure the entire school and photos were taken to make sure everything is built with accuracy to match their real world counterparts. 

Things were going well until January 2021 when lockdown began (again). This was a big problem as the team had no access to the school but after a week or two a remote server was set up, a world that everyone could join no matter where they were, as long as they had the code to log on. After this the building began in earnest, the project was now in full swing. Online meetings were held during first class every Thursday over Google Meet. During lockdown a member of the team went into the school occasionally (adhering to Covid-19 guidelines) to take photos and measurements. The school was completely empty apart from some teachers being in, it was a strange feeling.

The project gained a lot of attention from other students and teachers in the school.

The project was even entered into the local enterprise competition, the project was named “virtual vision” and won runner up for an award. The team attended multiple webinars regarding digital champions with big companies such as Google and Microsoft. The server was finally finished in May and was shown off to others in the school. The plan for the “St Colmcille’s world” the server is for incoming first years to be able to explore and learn about the layout of the school before they start, and it is hoped this will make life easier for them as they move from primary into secondary school. 

After months of planning, construction, design and a few technical difficulties along the way, the final product is now ready for people to enjoy! 

Easter Eggs have been hidden across the server, some bigger than others, you can go to the moon and witness a great battle between two giant monsters, we built these to allow some creativity, we added several hidden sections to the school in the way that programmers would often add “easter eggs” to video games. Can you find them all? Log on to find out!