So far so good on the Minecraft server!  We've got about 15 teens involved, and they're happily building away. So far the tasks have been:

1) Find the City
2) Build a house
3) build a business  (just for show, we're not messing around with an economy at this point)

Here's the city:

I have been impressed with the adorable houses some of the teens have built!  They're mostly boys, but we've got at least two ladies in there.  The building up in the air is the insane asylum, and in the distance you can see a couple of towers of the fort.  I'm disappointed to see a little destruction--someone must have spawned some creepers, which isn't very sporting.

Now I need to come up with more tasks and challenges to keep them occupied.  I think perhaps I'll have them build famous landmarks next?

I purchased three Minecraft gift cards at our local Game Stop, and this summer I'll be giving them away.  The first contest will be your standard "guess how many whatevers are in this jar", and I think I'm going to try to track down green gummy bears in bulk and call them creepers.  Cute, eh?  Not sure what I'll do for the other contests, but I'm sure something will come to me!

We've been in creative mode all of May, I think in June I may switch to survival.  Perhaps survival mode AND a building challenge, to make it extra difficult? Hmm.