Minecraft in education. How Playing Minecraft Can Change Education (Really) By Danica Davidson 7/8/2015 Since its release in 2009, Minecraft has conquered the gaming world, made its dent on popular culture, and taken over your free time.
But there’s another important aspect to Minecraft that many people might not know or think about: its educational value. Last week, in the midst of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) convention, and right before Minecon in London, Microsoft launched its new Minecraft in Education destination site. Using Minecraft as a source of both entertainment and social change struck a special chord with me while I was at ISTE. Not only do I write about social issues like education for MTV, but I’m also a Minecraft novelist. But how exactly does the game itself turn into something genuinely educational (and not something we just call educational because it sounds good)? Skyhorse At the very least, even if you’re just playing for fun, Minecraft will teach you basic problem solving and building skills. Connected Camps.
Turn Your Smartphone Into A Science Lab. Hot Potatoes Home Page. Graphs Infographics. Voki Home. Worksheets, Lesson Plans, Teacher Resources, and Rubrics from TeAch-nology.com. Free Project Based Learning Resources from Edutopia. Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, is an excellent resource for educators.
Project Based Learning. (image from education-world.com) Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great way to teach students content, 21st century skills, and engage them in something fun and educational.
I spoke more about PBL in an earlier blog ( and we had some great reader comments (Tech&Learning, May 2009, page 14). Today I'd like to give some tips and ideas on how to get started with PBL in your classroom. First of all, PBL can be used in any classroom, in any subject, at any grade level. Projects can be one class period, or take weeks to complete. PBL does take planning. For instance, I teach physics and developed a project for my classes on structures and stress and strain. Another example of PBL is having the students research a topic and present it to the rest of the class through a multimedia presentation, website, or poster. Start small. A Step-by-Step Guide to the Best Projects. Manor New Technology High School in Manor, Texas, is a 100 percent project-based learning school.
They are part of the New Tech Network of schools and their approach has yielded remarkable results, including a 98 percent graduation rate, with all of their graduates accepted to college. The success of their PBL approach is largely attributable to the fact that their process is designed to stimulate student inquiry. Additionally, their process can be applied to any project in any subject, which means there is a consistent approach across grades and subjects at Manor.
We followed a sophomore world studies class through a three-week project called Controlling Factors, created by teaching partners Mary Mobley (English) and Michael Chambers (world history). They designed a project that capitalized on the wild popularity among their students of the best-selling novel The Hunger Games. 10 Free E-Book Sites for iPad. Want to get the most out of your iPad - Are you using it as an e-reader?
There are multiple sites that offer free downloads of both classic and contemporary publications and the reading experience on the iPad is actually quite good. The font size, the instant access to chapters and pages and the .......all make for a positive reading experience. Coupled with this is the fact that this is about the only way to get anybody under the age of 20 to read for any length of time at all. For younger readers and kids learning to the read the interactive experience will engender a love of interaction with the written word. This is especially true of the newer types of apps that are coming out. But what is available as Free e-books or downloads and where can you access them. 1.
Project Gutenberg offers over 36,000 free ebooks to download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device. 2. 3. 4. iPad for Education.
Tools. Problem based learning.