Heidi James – teacher from Colquitz Middle School 

Minecraft EDU

    • popular with kids
    • DANTDM – YouTube
    • Kids exchanging IP addresses instead of phone numbers, collaborating beyond the school
    • resource link for minecraft – look at slides

Benifits of Minecraft:

  • team building
  • critical thinking
  • problem solving
  • solving problems for classmates – students can sometimes answer questions faster than teacher
  • purpose of Minecraft is to build things – crafting tables, building amazing things together, figuring out how to craft tools, called crafting recipe,
  • crafting recipe has to be done in a certain way, giving some of the items, but not giving everything away
  • community building – everyone had to work together
  • learn about agriculture, find seeds, know how to tend to them, learn how to care for your animals, dig a pit or build a fence,
  • characters sleep, must build a bed and a safe place, prioritize where you sleep, that is where you spawn when you die
  • Student BIOMs, give students specific jobs,
  • teaching students 3-d x/y ordered grids, learning from, math, social studies core competences all at the same time
  • tutorial – leads you through until you get better, towards the end of the tutorial world you can learn to fly and make tools
  • kids can learn about machines, pullies, building, science topics
  • has environmental concerns built into the program, and environmental options – can plant a bunch of trees together and you can create a house
  • not anit-social – it is okay if the teacher doesn’t know how to do anything on it except how to launch as they will figure it out, ask the students to help each other
  • tap into student voice
  • Students are god in minecraft
  • great to see Grade 8 students take the lead in teaching us in our PDPP program
  • Mindplex – mini games, separate servers online, separate from the school server
  • Highpixel – mini games, painting on wool,
  • for assessment – stop and listen, take a clip board around the room, language of the core competences, oral, formative observation, and detailed reflection about core competences, justify, explain struggles and experience with formative assessment, stop and listen, see if the kids are engaged,
  • The kids that are quiet in math, trying so hard, writing things down – can open up and be very vocal in minecrafting strategies
  • Creative or survivor; in survivor you can die… everyone starts with nothing except for the leader, pick axe and..
  • you can be killed by monsters, skeletons, spiders,
  • may have to mute as it slows the server down
  • Teacher control – can control all settings, whether kids can talk, kill each other etc…
  • Keep inventory – when you die you can keep your stuff
  • teacher can gift students gift… food, tools,
  • turtles – green square robot that can build things….