MinecraftEdu at Allison Union

Today the Grade 4s at Alliston Union had their first go with MinecraftEdu. It took some time to get the program loaded on all the computers but once the students were in you could hear the excitement as they explored together.

One of the best activities for getting started is to have the students try the tutorial world (which can be found in the MinecraftEdu launcher). The students can play independently or you can start the server and load the tutorial world.

This tutorial will walk you through how to start the server with the tutorial world:

MinecraftEdu Pilot Inquiry Begins!

Today a group of passionate students and teachers came together to share their learning. The goal of our day was to understand more about how the engaging game of Minecraft can be used in the classroom. The students were showing teachers and administrators how to play the game as they worked on a challenge to build their dream learning environment. Soon they were not only showing all the adults how to play but they were guiding them through the game! The students were the Minecraft experts and the educators were asking lots of questions. Knowing how Minecraft works helps to understand what is possible in the game and how it can be used for creation and making thinking visible.

By the end of the day, educators were inspired to use Minecraft for learning. Lots of resources were shared that have been created by other educators to be used in the classroom. We also started talking about and designing our own engaging learning experiences that explored mathematics, social studies, character, collaboration, critical thinking and digital citizenship.

The students and the educators all took risks today and that made all the difference in the world. We were co-learners and together our learning was much deeper. Teachers were experiencing being a learner alongside their students and how this can transform the learning culture in the classroom.

Thank you to all of the students - you made a big impact today!

The educators who participated today were given the opportunity to use the MinecraftEdu program in their classrooms. We will be working closely with the IT department to set MinecraftEdu up in their schools and test how the server will work. We will update you as we learn more!

Minecraft and Explain Everything at Andrew Hunter

How can you build the perfect community in Minecraft? This was the question that the Grade 3s at Andrew Hunter were challenged with as they started their new social studies inquiry. Working in partners or small groups, the students could be heard asking each other questions and discussing what they would include in their build. At times they didn’t always agree but we saw this as an opportunity to pause and talk about digital citizenship. Our conversations about what makes a good digital citizen and the connects to what makes a good citizen in the real world fit naturally into our discussion about communities. 

As students were creating we often paused to remind them to take a screenshot. This was important because we had purposefully built time into the activity to have the students reflect on what they were doing and describe what they were learning about. At the end of the build time we had students import their photos into Explain Everything and describe what they were doing. Here is an example created by one of the students:

After the students created their screencast in the Explain Everything app we had them share their video with a classmate. Our aim was to give feedback to each other but looking back I would skip this step as we had not given them enough instruction on how to give descriptive peer to peer feedback. We were much more successful when we invited all the students to the carpet and shared a few of the videos as a group. We discussed the elements that would make a great community and added them to our anchor chart. The resulting discussion had students making the comments we wanted to hear as many wanted to go back and add to their Minecraft creation.  

Minecraft Readings

A couple books I picked up to read over the summer...

Teachercraft: How Teachers Learn to Use Minecraft in Their Classrooms by Sean Dikkers.

Teacher Craft is about how teachers learn to use new digital media. Teacher learning is central to reform and change across subject areas and age levels, but how much do we really know about how teachers learn to try new lessons in classrooms? Minecraft is currently the game of choice for millions of youth and also for these seventeen teachers who claim it has transformed their classrooms. Its rapid adoption also provides a unique window of opportunity to look inside the recent memory of innovative teachers and unpack how they learned. Why did they pick Minecraft? More importantly, how did they pick Minecraft? Where did they hear about it? Who do they trust for ideas? How do they test new ideas? Can we begin to identify the trajectories of truly innovative teachers? It turns out, we can - and it may not be what you'd expect.  (From the back of the book)

An Educator's Guide to Using Minecraft® in the Classroom: Ideas, inspiration, and student projects for teachers > Ideas, inspiration, and student projects for teachers.

Inquiry into Early Societies

For the last few weeks the grade 4s have been learning about early societies. Kris and I used the following two questions to frame our inquiry:

• Why are early societies important to learn about?
• How similar and different was the life in early societies from the way we live today?

Through discussion with the students we decided to create a comparison of early societies and the way we live today in Minecraft. The students researched into Medieval Times, Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt. As they began building their communities in Minecraft many questions came up around materials that were used to build houses and create tools. I heard kids talking back and forth about design and if that was historically accurate. I overheard two students talking about whether they would build a library. Asking each other if they had libraries back then, if they had books, what they were made out of and who would own them. They decided to do a bit more research and then started talking about who would know how to read, what they would read and how that impacted their lives.

At the end of the three days the students had to work on their builds, they took me on guided tours explaining their constructed society and comparing it to the community they live in. In the end they came to the conclusion that kids from back then were not that different than them in what they needed: to have a home and be happy. They were particularly concerned that many of the kids from ancient societies didn’t have the opportunity to go to school.

MinecraftEdu: Tech, Engagement, Purpose.

The next step in our Minecraft pilot is to set up MinecraftEdu. To do this we have been working closely with our IT department, who have downloaded the game and set it up to work on the school network. A very helpful Mike has helped troubleshoot too!

With the technology in place we focused our attention on the learning. This all begins with student engagement and using their excitement for the game as an advantage. The activities we plan need to be fun and linked to an academic purpose at the same time. We do this by designing lessons that have clear learning goals but are also open for kids to do what they do best: play the game, imagine, problem solve and create!

Our First Challenge: Minecraft + Fractions

Today in Grade 4 at West Bayfield we started off by reviewing our expectations for playing MinecraftPE on the iPads. Then we used Google Hangouts to connect with Scott McKenzie’s Grade 3/4 at New Dundee Public School.

Google Hangout with New Dundee PS

Scott and his students shared examples of ways they use Minecraft in their learning and

answered our questions. His students then challenged the grade 4s with their first creation task in Minecraft. 

They asked us: How many ways can you show fractions in your world?

Scott and I had discussed this idea pervious to our classroom Hangout. His advice was to give students a clear goal and task as this helps to keep the play focused on learning.

We said goodbye to our new friends and the Grade 4s got right to work building with a partner. We decided that after each example was finished the paired students would switch who was holding the iPad and building. As they finished an example, the students took a screenshot of their work (by pressing the home button and power button at the same time) and added the pictures to their Google Drive.

Screenshot of student work

 It was interesting listening to the students use math vocabulary as they were building. One pair was discussing how they were going to figure out the fraction and so they added the stone blocks on the side to help. Another pair was talking about how they knew the orange was 1/4 because the pieces were the same size. I even heard two students discussing how they could show fractions in the new house they had just built (complete with a fenced yard and pool!).

As students were sharing with each other at the end of the lesson, it was very clear from their energy that they were proud of their creations. One student told me: “Minecraft makes learning math fun!” This was awesome to hear as it linked back to one of our goals to promote positive math mindsets.

Screenshot of student work