This is the post I promised weeks ago or was it a month ago now... who knows, but finally here it is for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, and please leave a comment below if this resonated with you, or your opinion is different, I would love to engage further around this idea.
I have spent countless hours mulling over the best way to on-board teachers to Minecraft in their classrooms and developing training to make this happen. It was extraordinary to run my first 'Day 2' training with a group of teachers here.
I have never seen the lights go on quite so quick as when I gave this group of teachers the choice between a set of carefully chosen activities from the suite of Minecraft:EE Activity of the week. I wanted to make sure the curriculum links could be clearly visible with a bit of prodding.
Without any instructions other than to complete the activity, and a time limit within which to do it in, off they went. They had a great time, who doesn't! After the time limit was up I started with my prodding, by asking the following questions:
"What is next after this activity?"
"What learning outcomes do you think it covers?"
"What could you discuss with students about this activity?"
It wasn't until that point that they really got the distinction between an activity and a lesson. Not only that, we kept going and had a discussion about how important it was for them, as the teachers in 'charge' of student learning, to be very clear in their own mind about what students are gaining, with regards to learning outcomes, from working in Minecraft.
What was great, is then we went into collaborative activities and showed the absolute value of collaborative work in Minecraft worlds, this is an activity I think should probably be in day 1, and I plan on doing so. I even did this at another event, in a 45 minute training session. Got groups of teachers who didn't know eachother, to join a world and work together on creating something. Then share what happened, what outcomes we could pull from it, and what the next steps may have been.
Back to the day 2 training group, we then, with some friendly advice and suggestions from years of developing Minecraft lessons, began to plan and develop their own lessons, linked to their own teaching, their own plans and their own classrooms.
Each and every participant had at least a half ready plan for implementation in a particular topic or lesson linked to learning outcomes by the time they left the training day. We are about due to catch up and discuss how these lessons went, or what stopped them coming to fruition and start the planning process again ready for next year.
It is exciting times here, and things are starting to gain solid traction. The most recent data set has 300 teachers across the state, using this with 24 students each, on average 7 times a month. This is all averages, and well, may mean very little, but if that is the 'average' it is absolutely astonishing, and something I am very proud to have been a part of.
Thanks for reading and as always feel free to leave a comment below.
I have spent countless hours mulling over the best way to on-board teachers to Minecraft in their classrooms and developing training to make this happen. It was extraordinary to run my first 'Day 2' training with a group of teachers here.
I have never seen the lights go on quite so quick as when I gave this group of teachers the choice between a set of carefully chosen activities from the suite of Minecraft:EE Activity of the week. I wanted to make sure the curriculum links could be clearly visible with a bit of prodding.
Without any instructions other than to complete the activity, and a time limit within which to do it in, off they went. They had a great time, who doesn't! After the time limit was up I started with my prodding, by asking the following questions:
"What is next after this activity?"
"What learning outcomes do you think it covers?"
"What could you discuss with students about this activity?"
It wasn't until that point that they really got the distinction between an activity and a lesson. Not only that, we kept going and had a discussion about how important it was for them, as the teachers in 'charge' of student learning, to be very clear in their own mind about what students are gaining, with regards to learning outcomes, from working in Minecraft.
What was great, is then we went into collaborative activities and showed the absolute value of collaborative work in Minecraft worlds, this is an activity I think should probably be in day 1, and I plan on doing so. I even did this at another event, in a 45 minute training session. Got groups of teachers who didn't know eachother, to join a world and work together on creating something. Then share what happened, what outcomes we could pull from it, and what the next steps may have been.
Back to the day 2 training group, we then, with some friendly advice and suggestions from years of developing Minecraft lessons, began to plan and develop their own lessons, linked to their own teaching, their own plans and their own classrooms.
Each and every participant had at least a half ready plan for implementation in a particular topic or lesson linked to learning outcomes by the time they left the training day. We are about due to catch up and discuss how these lessons went, or what stopped them coming to fruition and start the planning process again ready for next year.
It is exciting times here, and things are starting to gain solid traction. The most recent data set has 300 teachers across the state, using this with 24 students each, on average 7 times a month. This is all averages, and well, may mean very little, but if that is the 'average' it is absolutely astonishing, and something I am very proud to have been a part of.
Thanks for reading and as always feel free to leave a comment below.
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