Weekly Reflection #6

During week 9, we learnt about gamification and computational thinking and we even had a guest speaker who talked to us about Minecraft Education. Before our guest speaker, we went over the history of gaming education which was really interesting. I learnt that Roblox is 20 years old and that gaming education dates back to the 1960s where the Sumerian Game first kicked off gaming education but it wasn’t until the 1970s when the Oregon Trail game came out to really make gaming education skyrocket and become much more main stream. During the early 2000s where technology really started to pick up speed both Roblox and Scratch become popular in the classroom and I have even used Scratch before in middle school so I was surprised to find out it came out back in 2007. Overall, gaming education has always been around and will continue to grow especially in the next few years.

We then had a guest speaker talk to us about Minecraft Education which I found really interesting because I loved playing Minecraft as a kid so when I heard this was a teaching resource I got very excited. To start the presentation off, the speaker talked to us about how Minecraft helps students learnings and how it is an open sandbox, where you can explore worlds, craft, live in both survival and creative worlds and build a sense of community. They then went on and talked about how Minecraft builds creativity, increases problem solving skills as well as collaboration skills, brings learning to life, and of course how it is engaging and familiar for students. They then went onto Minecraft Education and showed us how it works and the different kind of worlds you can use for teaching. There are pre-built worlds that have lesson plans attached to them as well as challenge worlds and even esport. Theres worlds for almost every subject which I found really interesting, theres also different assessment tools built into the game like the camera, book and quill, and even a portfolio the students can use. One world I found really interesting was the Pacific NorthWest Coast Experience which is where students can learn from Indigenous elders which I think is such a cool way to incorporate Indigenous learnings into the curriculum. Overall, I found this presentation very informative and really exciting and I cannot wait to incorporate Minecraft Education into my future lessons.

Here is the Minecraft Education lesson library: https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/resources/explore-lessons

Here is the Minecraft Education Pacific NorthWest Coast Experience lesson: https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/resources/social-studies/indigenous-cultures-and-history

Finally, we got the chance to play around with Scratch and here is what I coded in the very short amount of time we had left at the end of class.