Two weeks ago, Heidi James, a grade 7 teacher, and five of her students from Colquitz middle school came to our technology class to talk about how they are using Minecraft in their learning. Not only does she use Minecraft as a way to learn about civilizations, she runs a Minecraft club that students from Grade 5 – high school join. Here are some of my notes from their visit:

• The students helped get $5000 from the principal to build a Minecraft server for their school
• Recently, Microsoft bought Minecraft which has affected the privacy permissions for the club. They can still play through their old server, but the district will be getting permissions to use Microsoft soon which will clear things up (this is all very confusing for me but I’m trying to keep up)
• Heidi uses Minecraft because she finds that it builds teamwork and problem solving skills
• The students really enjoy it (they are super enthusiastic and it’s awesome to see)
  • They find that it builds a sense of communitity
  • They learn about agriculture – seeds, tending crops, building fences, getting dirt, breeding animals
  • They have to cooperate in order to succeed
• The grade & curriculum looks at early human civilizations
• For a unit last year the class talked about leadership and identified leaders in their class. These students were selected to be pharaohs who lead civilizations in Minecraft. The students had to work together to get resources, make tools etc
• Through Minecraft, they learn about x, y, z coordinate grids and have to use these to navigate within the game (dying and being rebooted seems to be a big part of Minecraft so navigating back to their teams is a frequent task). Coordinate grids are in the Grade 7 curriculum
• They also learn about pulleys and machines (Grade 5 curriculum)
• Also about mining, contruction, making tools
• Environmental stewardship sensitivities are built into the game to prevent over extraction of resources
• Animals and crops don’t die, but they will grow slowly if you don’t take care of them properly
  • If you harvest trees properly, they will resprout and even start to produce fruit
  • Strip mining could cause you to fall into lava (and die)
• They learn about extreme environments – there’s an underwater world you can build in with an ROV
• The students in class spoke confidently and seemed to have a warm relationship with Heidi, they have obviously built strong connections, in some part through this game
• Heidi plays on her own, but she says she can’t match the skills of all the students combined, or even some students individually
  • Teachers also could just supervise and not play
  • There is teacher mode where she has absolute control over everyone’s avatar and has some extra powers like teleporting and flying which makes it a bit easier to keep an eye on everyone
• It’s a social game, there is chat built in and a lot of classroom talk – which we experienced when they let us play. It was loud with chatter and problem solving
• The Minecraft EDU will be available for all schools on the south island soon
• The students built the tutorial world, and another game world, that we tried out together with Heidi
• Not all students will buy into this as a classroom tool, definitely depends on the class
• For assessment, Heidi said she just stops and listens, see who’s on task, take anecdotal notes for core competencies
  • They also do self-reflection – answering deep thinking questions about core competencies
  • They justify the work they did, what were the struggles personally and for the group, how they overcame them
• Heidi said, and I can see this being true, that it is a new way for some students to stand out – quiet smart kids who might not speak up a lot in class can become leaders in the Minecraft EDU world

They set us up to play and let us run wild for a while. It was definitely a fun game. I don’t know if I have time to take on a new hobby but I have a new found respect for Minecraft. I didn’t find it disorienting, but I don’t get nauseous easily. Other people in class did feel sick after a while though. I tried to take screen shots but I never figured out how to do it while inside the game, and then I had to worry about bedtime and being eaten by zombies and everything anyway. I was one of the lucky ones with a bed but it was still very exciting times at night!

Today was the first day of our Eduational Technology Inquiry class presentations.

Keiro presented her inquiry into Stop Motion Animation

• She played  a video showing a simple class project where students moved post-its around on the floor to create a video. It looked like the kids were having a lot of fun, taking turns, moving their bodies
• For her project, she had problems with one program (iStopMotion?), but used the Stop-Motion app to take all of her photos with a tripod and a special phone grip
• She put the animation together in photoshop to add drawing
• The “twinning” button helps make the motion smoother
• The pros for using this in the classroom are that you could use it for every subject (We are going to integrate it with our art lesson plan I think)
  • One idea she suggested was taking photos in gym class and getting the kids moving around a lot take motion photos
• The cons she discussed were that you can be really limited by technology sometimes, and it is quite time consuming
• Her tips are to use a remote camera button
• And check out giphy.com for awesome gifs!

Katrina, Brie and Taylor presented their inquiry into Digital Literacy. This include:

• Information literacy – what is fake vs authentic, who is benefitting from information and what bias is there
• Ethical use – copyright issues
• Protecting yourself online
• Digital footprint
• Handling digital communication
• Cyber bullying
• Some interesting resources they covered are:
  • Navigating Digital Information Series
    • Fact checking, later reading, evaluating evidence
  • Media Literacy Series
    • History, influence & persuasion, advertising, media ownership
• Best practices are:
  • Student choice & voice
  • More creation than consumption
  • Multi-modalities
  • Collaboration – learn and make mistakes with your peers
  • Ensure accessibility for all learners
  • Crowd-accelerated learning
  • Social media & peer-to-peer social learning
  • Focus on core competencies
• Talk to parents
  • Don’t assume understanding and awareness – parents may not be aware of their child’s online use and footprint
  • Different families have different rules
  • This is part of the B.C. curriculum
  • Communication is key, with a cool idea about a digital family night in class or for the whole school
  • Balance the risks and benefits – validate parents’ concerns, provide reassuring info
• Address sex ed in digital literacy
  • Kids are learning about sex online, which is both good and bad
  • There is misinformation but also can be more inclusive for people who’s questions are not answered by information about heterosexual relationships
  • Websites don’t replace good quality in class info, so it’s not a way to cop out.
• And a revisit of the House Hippo!

And we presented our inquiry into Google Geographic Products. The slides  for our presentation are here: Ed Tech Maps

And you can find more information here:

Google Maps Basics

Google My Maps

Google Street View

Cool things to do on Google Earth

Google Sky, Mars, and Moon

Google Earth vs Google Maps

Also check out this post about StoryMap JS. You can use this in somewhat similar ways to My Maps, but it’s a different user interface and slightly different functionality and look.

In class this week we talked about graphics – how to make, edit and use them:

• Graphics are either pixel or vector based. I haven’t thought about this stuff in so long, but my background in mapping and remote sensing was where I initially learned about these terms. Sometimes I forget that I do have quite a bit of experience dealing with graphics, it was always just on the side so I didn’t really know I was learning it
• The most commonly used programs for creating and editing graphics are Adobe Photoshop (pixels) and Illustrator (vector)
  • I’ve used these without any instruction and muddled my way through. There’s definitely a lot to learn.
  • They are expensive to buy (thank goodness for a student price 5 years ago), and now have annual subscriptions which increase the price as well
  • Most school districts don’t have access to these, so using them in our future classes is likely not possible
• There are lots of other options. Some are also proprietary, others are open source or browser based. There’s also freeware, where you can use it initially for free but some functions are off limits with paying
• A few I jotted down and will check out later were GIMP, Vectr, and Pixlr
• BUT Michael mainly wanted to show us some of the capabilities of using Microsoft Powerpoint for editing (and creating) graphics
  • Widely accessible, not nearly as expensive
  • Familiar to most people
  • The early Microsoft take over of the office product suite really was incredible in how it still continues to dominate despite most of our class using apple products for everything else
• So, in using Powerpoint, anything on the slides can be exported as a graphic, and it won’t be the size and shape of a slide, but the actual graphics you are interested in
  • You can save as all different kinds of file types
  • All the slides in a deck can be saved as individual images (I need to find out if there’s an automated way to do this because that would be great. Do they append the names?)
  • There are different artistic effects and formatting tools
  • You can add text, and use cropping and flipping/rotation to alter images
  • Smart Art can do a lot for you, or at least give some ideas

So I tried it out and made this image, which I’m going to use in a post soon to get into the weeds a bit about what really makes Middle Eastern food what it is….. a spice and ingredient round up! Stay tuned.