This week in tech, we had a guest lecture! Her name is Kara Dawson, and she told us all about Minecraft Education and how we can properly integrate it into the classroom.
When using Minecraft Education in the classroom, Kara emphasized setting clear rules/guidelines for students so they don’t use it improperly or go off task. However, other than that, students have plenty of creative freedom when using Minecraft Education. Students can explore different worlds and build several different things. Minecraft education is a great tool because it is great for community building, builds creativity, strengthens problem-solving skills, supports collaboration, brings learning to life, encourages persistence, and is engaging and familiar.
Honestly, before this class, I had no prior knowledge about Minecraft. I used to play on my Grammy’s iPad when I was little, but that was the extent of it. After this lecture, I feel so much more inspired to incorporate Minecraft Education into my lessons.
In class we also played around with the “Scratch” website. I struggled a lot with this because I have never used this website before, and have very little experience with gaming and coding. I played around with it and eventually figured it out. I definitely need to become more familiar with this program before introducing it to my future students!
