Most students know how to create their own worlds in Minecraft. Some have also looked through the library of pre-made worlds and imported some of these worlds like Inspiration Island or Fantastic Mr. Fox. If you have never done this then you should have a read of the link below and try it on your device.

What is a zip file?

There are times when you will need to know how to import a world that is in a special type of file called a ‘zip file’. A zip file has the extension .zip (e.g. mcworld.zip) which indicates that it is a compressed file or archive. A compressed file or archive is a file that uses software to compress (make smaller) and combine 1 or more files into a single file. There could be hundreds of files and folders in a single zip file. When you are downloading things from the internet you will often see zip files. It’s much more convenient to download 1 file than to download 20, 30 or 100 files one by one. The zip file is a container, like a box, for all the other files that are somehow related. For example, the zip file might contain homework from a class of 26 students. Rather than have 26 files from each student that must be downloaded – you can combine them together into a single zip file (e.g. 4C_Homework.zip). You can then copy that zip file to another computer, email it or store it somewhere.

How do you open a zip file?

Zip files are so common that almost all computer devices have the ability to open zip files. However, you must understand that that there are at least a few steps to actually get the contents out of a zip file. Remember, it’s a container so you must:

• Download the zip file – This is the easy part. All web browsers know that when you click a link on a zip file that it should download it to your device. On a computer, it will almost always go to the ‘downloads’ folder. On an iPad it will be saved in the Downloads folder in the ‘Files’ app.
• Open the zip file – This allows you to see the contents of the zip file. As there may be 1 or many files inside you need to inspect it first to decide which ones you want to take out (extract).
• Extract the contents – Once you have decided which file(s) you want to extract you must then select them and extract them to a location on your device.

It sounds a bit complex, but essentially you get the container (download), look inside (open), pull stuff out and store it somewhere (extract). It’s like retrieving information from a filing cabinet (container). First you go to the filing cabinet, next you open it up, find what you are looking for, take it out and use it.

The following link provides these steps for an iPad:

https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/how-to-unzip-a-zip-file-with-your-iphone-or-ipads-files-app/

This link has the steps for computers running windows 10 – you can skip the first section about creating zip files:

https://www.howtogeek.com/668409/how-to-zip-and-unzip-files-on-windows-10/

For Apple computers all you have to is to double-click the zip file and it will automatically extract all the files into a new folder.

Try it out…

Here’s a zip file to practice on. It’s the same characters.zip file from my example above. Click the image below to download it:

If you did it correctly you should have 14 graphics including Naomi the ninja pictured above.

Import a Minecraft world from a zip file

Ok, now we’re ready for the real test. If you did the practice above you should now be able to download any zip file, open it up and extract all the contents. When you import Minecraft Education Edition worlds you only need 1 file with the extension .mcworld (e.g. Brewerton.mcworld). The hard part is opening and extracting the world file. The easy part is importing that world into Minecraft. This page will help you import on an iPad. Here are the steps on a computer:

Try it out…

Here’s the final test. Can you import this copy of the Brewerton world? If you can you will have your very own copy of the world to explore. Just remember, that any resources you collect or things you build will NOT be there when we have group sessions as it will exist on your device only. However, if you export your world (from the Settings menu) then you can give your copy of the world to others. More about that later.

The link below is a zip file containing the Brewerton world. See if you can download, open, extract and import the world into Minecraft. Let me know how you go. It’s tricky, but with a bit of practice you will get the hang of it.