Changing Minecraft World Names

My students and I have been somewhat frustrated by the lack of a world naming option. Sometimes students would enter the wrong world or have so many on one Pi that it was impossible to find the one with that Math project on it.

So,  with a bit of research we came across these steps.

1. Open up ‘File Manager‘ and click ‘View‘. Then tick the box that says ‘Show Hidden‘.
Tons of folders will now appear in your user dictionary (Default is ‘pi‘). One will be called ‘.minecraft‘, open it.

2. Open the ‘games‘ dictionary, then the ‘com.mojang‘ dictionary and finally the ‘minecraftWorlds‘ dictionary.

3. In here will be several folders. They will be named ‘world‘, ‘world-‘, ‘world–‘ etc. To rename the world, simply just right-click on one of these folders and click ‘Rename‘. Then just type what you want the world to be named!

Coding Music

One of the first activities that I put together for my students was related to music. I wanted my students to gain some familiarity with musical concepts and the Raspberry Pis. To do this, I combined the Raspberry Pi computers, Kano OS and Sonic Pi to achieve this goal.

Check out the Google Presentation (printable) that I used to start it all off.

Raspberry Pi + Sonic Pi + Kano OS = Music!

Where to buy the Raspberry Pi and other accessories

Rasberry Pi Model B with NOOBS SD Card (pre-installed)

There seems to be a lot of places to purchase the Raspberry Pi online. The supplier that I selected was Newark Element 14. They have both the Model A and Model B Pi as well as various kits. I selected the Raspberry Pi 8GB Bundle. Not only does this come with the Model B, but it also has an 8 gig (Class 4) SD card loaded with NOOBS. For the extra $6.20, the SD Card is worth it.

Shipping was quick! I ordered my first set of Pis on a Sunday and they arrived by Tuesday.

The problem is that you need more accessories to get the Pi up and running. I had the monitor, keyboard and mouse donated. I still needed a micro usb power supply (5V/700mA) and an HDMI to DVI adaptor for the monitor. Newark sold both these products, but I found the prices a little too high for my liking (since my goal was to buy as many Pis as possible). I decided to shop on Ebay.com and Amazon.ca for the remaining accessories.

 

Both of these items were available for about $1-$10 each with free shipping. Pretty amazing price, except it can take up to 20 business days to arrive. Some suppliers ship faster, but it usually means that there will be an increase in price.

One note of caution, be careful to select a power supply that clearly indicates the power output. I accidentally bought some power supplies that did not quite work correctly. This lead to the Pi rebooting constantly. Luckily for me, I didn't spend too much money! Since we are so new to this, there will be lots of trials and many errors. That is ok!