Minecraft Mania Club
Flipping the classroom!
In Term 4 2013, our ICT Extension Club was 'Minecraft Mania' where we invited 'expert' Minecraft users from Years 1-5 to teach the teachers in a trial our newly created Minecraft server using Minecraft EDU.
Many Junior Schooling students had been asking all year if we could do a Minecraft focus in our ICT Extension Club!
My son had also been showing me his creations (many collaborative) at home. I was truly impressed by some of the work other educators had shared and decided to give it a go!
Soon after, the Year 3 teachers expressed an interest in exploring opportunities to incorporate gaming in their classrooms. Minecraft was good place to start, so we invited the Year 3 teachers to join in the club bright and early at 7:30 each Friday morning and promised that the students would be taking charge of teaching them the ropes!
The aim:
Steps:
Level 2: a little more complex or fancy
Level 3: the best version you can possibly make!
3. We then identified the key rules and expectations for our club and Minecraft world to ensure we had a productive and respectful learning experience.
In Term 4 2013, our ICT Extension Club was 'Minecraft Mania' where we invited 'expert' Minecraft users from Years 1-5 to teach the teachers in a trial our newly created Minecraft server using Minecraft EDU.
Many Junior Schooling students had been asking all year if we could do a Minecraft focus in our ICT Extension Club!
My son had also been showing me his creations (many collaborative) at home. I was truly impressed by some of the work other educators had shared and decided to give it a go!
Soon after, the Year 3 teachers expressed an interest in exploring opportunities to incorporate gaming in their classrooms. Minecraft was good place to start, so we invited the Year 3 teachers to join in the club bright and early at 7:30 each Friday morning and promised that the students would be taking charge of teaching them the ropes!
The aim:
- to explore opportunities to use Minecrraft for learning
- to enable our resident student Minecraft experts to collaborate and teach the teachers!
- to test our Minecraft server
- to provide a multilevelled sample world to use for instruction and modelling for a proposed 2014 project
- to enable the Year 3 teachers to learn about the world of Minecraft.
Steps:
- With help from our resident Minecraft expert, Tom, in the IT Department, we set up a 'flat land' world in creative mode.
- In our first session, we identified the things we COULD create - to identify what we already knew how to do. Collectively our students knew how to make furniture, houses, bridges, roller coasters, traps, mines, swimming pools volcanoes and much more. In pairs, students decided on one area to focus on (e.g. a chair, or a roller coaster) and create 3 levels of that item
Level 2: a little more complex or fancy
Level 3: the best version you can possibly make!
3. We then identified the key rules and expectations for our club and Minecraft world to ensure we had a productive and respectful learning experience.
