Today’s class was so much fun! We received the visit of students from Colquitz school and we played Minecraft in the class. Of course, given my inquiry project in Edtech, it was not the first time I played Minecraft. But I was truly happy to have an experienced teacher and student leaders in the classroom to help me understand how to implement it in my own classroom. And they gave us a taste of how you can make this happen!
First, they used a tutorial to help the students to learn how to navigate the world and it was so creative. I loved how much care they put into training new people in Minecraft and how elaborate their teaching program was. I also like the idea of inviting students to take on the role of becoming the teachers and creating exercises for students to learn a specific set of skills. I don’t know if they created it or it was their teachers, but I like to imagine that I could ask my more experienced students or a club at a school to help me create it.
Secondly, they presented the other side of MinecraftEDU. By playing at home, I don’t have access to the interface and the settings so I didn’t know how to manage the teacher side of the game. It was super interesting to learn what you can control and overview, and how you have all these possibilities to help and support your students (like giving them resources, bringing them to you or going to them, etc).
Thirdly, I had a really good time talking to the students about their own reality. I loved hearing them talking about passion about Minecraft and what they can do or achieve. They seem so motivated by the game that I thought that it must be such a great way of showing their learning for them. They must produce incredible stuff! While talking to them, they mentioned to me that they hate when the world is already build. What they like in Minecraft is actually build stuff so I shouldn’t take that away from them by providing a set world. It was so useful!
They gave me the idea of asking the students to build something and tell a story around it! Which was so useful!
I am really glad they visited us because I didn’t have the chance to discuss with students about my inquiry so far. I had one simple encounter with a student and that was it!
