Today a teacher from Colwood Middle School (Mrs. James) and 5 of her top Minecraft students came to give us a presentation on how they use Minecraft in the classroom.

 

Mrs. James is very passionate about using Minecraft in the classroom. She, herself plays Minecraft in her own time. I think she has some really good ways of integrating the Core Competencies and/or Big Ideas into her Minecraft lessons. Mrs. James is a great teacher because she trusts and respects her students – she is proud to say that she learns every day from her students and trusts them enough to explore and experiment within the game.

 

Written Reflection: 1)what they contributed 2)what problems they encountered and how they overcame it

 

Mrs. James  says you have a lot of control in Minecraft as a teacher by giving yourself “creative mode” in the tutorial.

 

For Social Studies (Grade 7) where students are supposed to learn all about early civilizations, Mrs. James puts students into groups and they each have to build a civilization using minimal materials in Minecraft. The Pharaoh (leader of the group) assigns each student an area of the civilization to be in charge of (agriculture, mining, building, etc). Mrs. James can slowly gift groups food, tools, etc. based on how well the group is working together etc.

 

I have some reservations about the use of videogames as a teaching tool in the classroom. I do think there are valuable things to learn within the game however I would much rather see students communicating and playing in person and ideally outside than inside, solitary, and sitting. We are forcing students to learn mostly indoors anyway but I fear that videogames like this are addicting and if we’re promoting it in the classroom, kids will go home and play for too long. I fear that Minecraft is many kids’ only interest and/or way of communicating with their peers.

 

I should say that I’ve never been into videogames myself and do view them in a negative way because I saw the negative effect they had on my brother. My brother became very addicted to videogames and as a result, he isolated himself inside playing for too long every day and was not social nor active enough. This spiraled into depression and anxiety for him in his early high school years. Needless to say, he is doing well now at 25 years old but when he goes back to my parents house he allows himself to binge on videogames for a couple of days.