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 Weekly Blog #5 - Mining Into the Future

This week, we had Matteo Di Muro speak to us about computational thinking and gamification of the classroom. This is something that really excites me as I'm a gamer myself. I think I could provide a lot of coaching in the future if the school I teach at has an esports team. Or maybe it will be up to me to start an esports team! Whichever it is, I'm all for it. I think gaming can teach students a lot about teamwork, fine motor skills, and decision making. If the GameStop stock has taught us anything recently, it's that gaming is on the rise 😂.

Matteo specifically talked more in-depth about teaching students to code and using games like Minecraft to do that. Minecraft has a specific education version that can be found here. What's awesome about this is that they have a few activities to do in the classroom that come with complete lesson plans on how to implement them. It also includes what curricular outcomes it relates to, and what age group it can be done with. It even has performance expectations of what students should be able to do after completing the lesson. I don't know about you, but I WISH we had stuff like this when I was in school. The only technology we had was All The Right Type. As the kids say, IYKYK...

Comments

  1. Miss. Alicia BueckertFebruary 15, 2021 at 11:57 AM

    For me personally, gamification within the classroom kind of scares me a bit. Growing up, I didn't have an opportunity to game much. My mom advocated for us to spend time outside, read, and play bored games together. I need to do some research so that I have a better understanding of how gamification in my classroom would be beneficial for my students. I know a few kids that love Minecraft and it is important to use platforms and make activities that involve my students interests. That makes way for an authentic learning experience. Thanks for sharing Jeremy!

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  2. Mr.OFebruary 15, 2021 at 3:48 PM

    I'm so excited for the implementation of things such as Minecraft Education. My old Ct uses scratch in his intro computer science classes, which uses the same architecture as Minecraft Education but without the fun Minecraft skin. Now, scratch already draws a lot of interest from students, and with Minecraft in the classroom the interest would be turbo charged!

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  3. Joshua FergusonFebruary 18, 2021 at 4:56 PM

    Nice blog Jeremy. Hopefully we can compete as fellow epsorts coaches for our schools.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Cristina DiazFebruary 24, 2021 at 1:15 PM

    Dude!!! Start an esport team! Let's learn to play and get famous! That Minecraft Education is very cool. I didn't know that Minecraft had applications in school! I'm sure my students would love it if I could integrate video games into my classroom so this week's talk was a great start.

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  5. HirpaBFebruary 27, 2021 at 6:34 PM

    I really liked your post Jeremy. Well captured, what has been said on the topic. It is a nice tool to make learning joyful and fun for kids. I tried to practice scratch with my grade 6 son and posted on my blog. it is really fun.

    ReplyDelete

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