Reading Review Part A

 1. What issues, interests, or opportunities do you anticipate arising in your teaching in the near future?

Students in the schools I have been teaching in this year have been incredibly motivated and engaged by Minecraft. The primary students wanted as many books as they could get their hands on about Minecraft. Intermediate students, meanwhile, worked with their teacher on a Minecraft project. The excitement in the computer lab was palpable during these classes. Many students even chose to stay in over their lunches to work on the Minecraft project.

Working with students so engaged and excited by Minecraft seems like a rich avenue of exploration in the near future of my teaching career. I have always felt that where student curiosity and passion exist, success is sure to follow.

2. What curriculum is connected to this interest?

Minecraft can be used in a huge variety of ways in the classroom. The intermediate classroom project I refered to earlier, for example, asked students to create a sustainable community in Minecraft.

But my interest lies in a different direction. The intermediate teacher leading the Minecraft Sustainable Community project mentioned that she wasn't sure how to evaluate the assignment. Some students had hundreds of hours of expertise working with Minecraft while others were beginners with the program. Evaluating only the basic technical skills she directly taught them would be challenging for the beginners and miss out on the complexity the experts were capable of. She also commented to me about how many students were struggling with group dynamics as they were trying to complete the project.

My interest is to explore how Minecraft can be used as a vehicle for teaching Grade Seven students how to work successfully with their peers in a creative endeavor. One of the core competencies of The BC Ministry of Education is Communication. The Ministry states that "People who collaborate effectively recognize how combining others' perspectives, strategies, and efforts with their own enhances collective understanding, use, and impact." I believe this to be fundamentally true. Also, developing skills of collaboration will serve students throughout their lifetime while the technical skills of how to use a particular program may have a more limited shelf life.


3. Make a list of possible topics you might need to broaden your understanding of this area of interest.

- I would like to explore the concept of unconferences as a way of helping students to form groups based on shared interests

- I would like to use ideas from the books "Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In" and "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most" to help students negotiate the challenges that arise anytime people work together on a creative endeavor. There will be many other digital and print resources that will be interesting to research on this subject.

- I played a variety of games and activities while attending a course in negotiations based on the Harvard Law School Program of Negotiation. I would like to explore more of the materials from The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center of the Program of Negotiation at Harvard Law School and how they may help students work successfully with their peers

- I will make contact with the digital lead in my district who leads workshops in teaching Minecraft to students to learn what the common challenges are that students face when learning to use Minecraft. 

- I am going to assemble a small group of students at the school where I work who are interested in working with me to do a creative project in Minecraft. As a complete beginner in Minecraft, I think it will be incredibly instructional to go through the process of learning  how to use the program while creating something in a group



Comments

  1. D.McNee23 January 2022 at 19:29

    personal context. As you start your reading and research you may want to investigate the book “Why School” by Will RIchardson. It was the previous textbook for this course. It is now out of print but I can help you attain a copy if you are interested. Game-based learning would be another term you could search that might help you answer some of the questions you have about transferable skills and assessment. For your next post, you may want to include some multimedia elements such as images, links, or videos. These add another layer to your post and further enhance the reading experience for your audience.

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