Minecraft Tweetchat 10/15/14

Minecraft. Grand Oak Technology - Messages from the Mine (A Blog for the Grand Oak Minecraft Club) Minecraftinschool [licensed for non-commercial use only] / FrontPage. This wiki is devoted to hosting ideas, lessons, implementation strategies and more related to using the game, Minecraft in a school setting Whether you use it in a computer/gaming club, as part of your regular curricular instruction, or even at home with your own children, Minecraft's simple yet scalable "sandbox" virtual environment can be an excellent tool for engaging student learning.

The open-ended nature of the game lends it to application in a variety of subject areas. Game-based learning, virtual worlds, and simulations are emerging tools for reaching our learners. That's why this wiki was created. Are you an educator who also plays Minecraft? -Lucas Gillispie, Director of Academic and Digital Learning, Surry County Schools. Recent News (11/10/15) - Here's a Sustainable Community Project we're working on at Gentry Middle School. . (6/1/15) -Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) is awesome, but you knew that, right? (12/18/13) - Great tutorial video on how to level in mcMMO by Aidan. Minecraft Curriculum Design. Minecraft in Education - Community. How Videogames Like Minecraft Actually Help Kids Learn to Read.

Brecht Vandenbroucke Minecraft is the hot new videogame among teachers and parents.

It's considered genuinely educational: Like an infinite set of programmable Lego blocks, it's a way to instill spatial reasoning, math, and logic—the skills beloved by science and technology educators. But from what I've seen, it also teaches something else: good old-fashioned reading and writing. How does it do this? The secret lies not inside the game itself but in the players' activities outside of it. This is complex, challenging material. How could they do this? Hannah Gerber, a literacy researcher at Sam Houston State University, found much the same thing. Passion for games drives writing too. I'm praising Minecraft, but nearly all games have this effect. Go Back to Top. Gamification: How Clash of Clans changed my class.

There’s a reason that online multiplayer games like Clash of Clans are so popular.

When we leverage that engagement in the class, serious learning can come out of play. (Image via Supercell) My 5-year-old son loves the game Clash of Clans. If you’ve never played this online multiplayer game, the premise is this: You create an army of warriors and a village for them to live in. Then you find armies of other users of the game and you do battle against them. There are many reasons for its wild success, which has made it one of the most popular games for iOS and Android and earns the company $2.4 million every day (yes, every DAY). One reason: you get to build your village how you want. But you can’t do everything all at once. For a time, several of my students were excited about this game, too. One day, it hit me: I could leverage Clash of Clans’s success in my classroom.

Students ponder what new items to add to their bedrooms in “Ultimate Bedroom Makeover.” It worked. Related In "Ed Tech" My conversion from Minecraft grinch to supporter. Minecraft was created as a commercial video game, but teachers have adapted it for educational purposes.

I can see its vast potential now, even though I was a Mincraft grinch at first. (Screenshot from Wonderful World of Humanities) I got Minecraft blocked at my school a couple years ago. Now, I wish I hadn’t. Minecraft is a “sandbox” game, where players are given a world and can turn it into anything they want. They can build or destroy. One day, I found a few students making worlds on the computers in my homeroom class. I was amazed.

So what did I do? Minecraft was blocked within the next few days. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I see Minecraft in a totally different light now. There’s an entire movement in education to use Minecraft to teach. We will answer. Enderman Chairs.