Minecraft For Education - Teacher Academy - Modules 1-5

Kia ora koutou,

I decided it was finally time to get my head around Minecraft, especially after seeing what some Ako Hiko students were creating. Check out this awesome blog post.

So I started the Minecraft For Education: Teacher Academy and I'm really enjoying it. If you want to look into it here's the link. For fellow facilitators you can ask your Fusion person to set you up with one of your school accounts.

I didn't think about a blog post until I was well into module 4 but I thought I'd share some things I've been learning.

Camera, portfolio, book and quill 

These are all tools that students can use as evidence of their progress and to document their creations. They are a great way for students to reflect on their learning and they are able to be exported.

A photo from my portfolio (sunrise selfie)

Slates, posters and boards 

These are all ways of providing rewindable instructions for groups or students. The only differences between the three are their sizes. What a great way to scaffold learners into tasks. The is also an immersive reader built in so if students aren't confident reading the text they can have it read for them.

A poster (middle sized) with some instructions. 

Non-player characters (NPCs) 

You can spawn non-player characters for students to interact with during the game. These NPCs can give further instructions, give links to external resources (e.g. YouTube videos) or prompt students to carry out commands (e.g. open the door).

 

NPC before clicking on them.

NPC after clicking on them.

Monthly Build Challenges

These sound like good places to start to introduce Minecraft to students. Also on this screen you can see How To Play which are little interactive tutorials that have been super helpful for me as a total beginner.

So I'm about half way through now. You earn little badges as you go which is nice. Funnily enough this latest one is the only one I haven't got 100% on.

See you later for modules 6-11...

12 weeks of lockdown

Kia ora koutou,

Twelve weeks ago was the last time I set foot in a classroom. Despite there being plenty of positives about working from home, it has been a very challenging time. Over the weeks I have constantly been asking myself what is the best use of my time, what are the biggest and most urgent needs and how can I serve my schools, teachers and students most effectively?

This blog post is essentially a reflection on the ideas I have played with over the last three months. Writing these out has made me realise that I've tried a fair bit but I still get the overwhelming feeling that I could still be far more effective and efficient. I feel like there are missing pieces of the puzzle I haven't found yet.

I would absolutely love to hear about any ideas you have trialled in your schools or clusters as well as any feedback on the below items.

1. Podcast tutorials

I was keen to keep the Ako Hiko Podcast running so I put together four tutorials to support students while making their own episodes using Screencastify (audio only). Initially this was aimed at the Ako Hiko Ambassadors but I posted it on our blog so that anyone could have a go.

There are 54 views on the first tutorial, 36 on the second, 8 on the third and 6 on the last. I'd be interested to dig into why there was a drop off and what the barriers were that prevented students from producing an episode. My shining light though is Neha @ HPS who took up the idea and ran with it and it now preparing season 2 of her own podcast.

2. Podcasts and critical literacy

With a lack of episodes coming in and no chance to get into schools to record students I decided to make some episodes myself. I'd been doing a fair bit of reading around critical thinking and critical literacy so I set out to create some activities through the podcasts that would help develop these skills.

As you can see the numbers aren't huge but the episodes did get used, with Who is the baddie? being the most popular. Another aim of those episodes was having a main provocation to get students commenting and interacting with each other. Four comments in total was not a huge success on this front.

3. Relentless about reading

At a principals' meeting some people mentioned that they were concerned about whether students were reading enough. This reminded me of a wananga where the term 'relentless about reading' was used. With the help of some fellow facilitators I created a set of resources that teachers could use to keep engagement up with reading. 

It's a bit harder to know how many people used these or how useful they found the resource but I have seen the slide deck pop up on a number of class sites and this post has been a good reminder to follow up with those teachers.

4. Animated Film Festival

One of the huge disappointments was having to cancel the Ako Hiko Film Festival. We did still want to provide a creative opportunity for students so we turned it into an animated film festival instead.

I put together these resources for teachers and students to use and yesterday we had our first offical entry (see below). I also know that a couple of schools made this a big focus either at the end of term 3 or at the start of term 4 so I'm looking forward to seeing those entries come in.

5. Fun ways to engage students during Meets

I can't take credit for most of these ideas. Joining different class Meets and perusing class sites has helped me 'magpie' some great activities. Would you Rather has been one of the most popular so I've made a few of these on Google Forms. They have actually provoked some great discussion, with students justifying their choices, agreeing and disagreeing with each other and sharing whether they have been persuaded to change their minds.

My current favourite is playing Guess Who? with the people on the Meet screen as the characters. This has also been a great way to reinforce the expectations of having your cameras on and sitting still.

6. Currents posts

The number of people in our Currents community has kept creeping up. With some extra time on my hands I've tried to do a weekly update to share Blogger of the Week, other examples of quality blog posts, activities on class sites and other opportunities and events coming up.

7. Holiday blogging

This was more of a recycling and curation job to make sure students who were keen could do some holiday blogging.

8. Blog boosters

I created these blog booster lessons earlier in the year but I got a chance to use them in some classes where students had been blogging for a while and were ready for an extra challenge.

9. Online and optional Inquiry PLGs

As our Inquiry PLGs came a few weeks after lockdown started we decided to make them online and optional. We started with a demo slam with myself, lead teachers and a few other teachers sharing tips and tricks that we find useful, especially in a distance learning environment. We then broke out into groups to have discussions around discussion, critical thinking and creativity. 

36 people attended with representatives from each school present.

10. TBC - my thinking cap is on and open for ideas...

Ngā mihi nui

Thanks for reading this far...