Today we had a teacher and students from Colquitz and Spectrum school, where we were taught all about the Microsoft owned program, Minecraft. Minecraft is an incredible platform for both teachers and students to help them dive into different subject matters, make connections, and change pedagogy. There is an edition of Minecraft called Minecraftedu that allows students and teachers to access the program and change modes from tutorial to survival. In Minecraftedu teachers have the ability to change the settings and modes. They can adjust how and if students communicate, what resources are available to them, difficulty, controls, and so much more. The teacher also has the ability to relocate students within the game, have private conversations with them, and help students stay on task and focus. The students that came into our classroom were unbelievably excited and full of knowledge about the program and ways that it could be used. When playing the game in our class, peers were constantly talking, helping each other out, and learning from one another, leading to the building of rapport, communication skills, and bonding opportunities. The teacher discussed how she had learned a plethora of skills from her students while incorporating Minecraft within lessons. One of the most interesting skills she learned was instead of blurting out resources and instructions for students, she allowed them to play around with the crafting tables. If the students try out different options for themselves, they are more likely to retain the information they have learned and struggle less with resources in the future. The tutorial mode is structured more by the teachers and implements teamwork, ideas of career decisions, and different subject matters.
Integrating Minecraft into the classroom allows students to understand what career path they may want to go down. One of the students discovered that he is interested in becoming an architect, and another student loved the amount of creative freedom she had and was steered towards the arts. Minecraft is also beneficial in building community within the school. If teachers hold Minecraft at lunch and recess, students are interested can join and meet other students with similar interests. This creates a safe space for students where they can connect and build a community. Students can also work together online while in different locations. One of the students had used Discord and Skype in order to walk through what they had created on Minecraft and explain why and how they connected to the curriculum. If there is a particular set of skills and instructions the teacher wants the students to achieve, she hands out papers with checklists to help students reflect. This allows students to see their development, use metacognition, and understand how successful they were. The lesson held on Minecraft has taught me that teachers need to have an open mind and be willing to change and build on their pedagogy in order to interact with students and their interests. Teachers don’t have to be experts in order to use Minecraft with their students, they need to enter the class with an open mind and a willingness to learn from their students.