Teaching from the bleachers

Recently, I found myself sharing my "Mindcraft" experience to 25 very interested educators.  As I was talking about my ups and downs, successes and failures I came to an observation I had made earlier in the week.  It occurred to me that I am teaching from the bleachers.  I was a mere observer of the students performing in the classroom.  This could easily be taken the wrong way.  If my administrators heard, they would be having walk-throughs a every day or even every hour.

When I say "teaching from the bleachers", you might have visions of students at their seats filling in meaningless worksheets while I vigorously grade a pile of equally meaningless worksheets.  This is not the case.

My ultimate goal for my students is to create independent learners.  Students who can be given a task and accomplish it.  They don't need someone to point them in the right direction.  They have the skills, tools, and resources to complete a task and do it with fidelity.

I have taught them how to use the technology to their advantage effectively and safely.  Using search engines designed for their age, tools allowing them to collaborate with other students, they are able to problem solve and conquer.

I get to view all of this from afar getting authentic assessments of their growth.  I am no longer the focus of their learning.  I am merely a facilitator.  I bring the problems, they bring the solutions.  I give them a task and sit back to watch the magic happen.  In reality, I am able to pull students for individual help and focus on missing or lagging skills.  This is a result of Mindcraft.  My kids' motivation is strong enough to challenge them to do it all themselves.  They don't need or want me to show them the way.  They are in charge of their learning.

Venturing into ELA

Our current ELA unit focuses on healthy foods and good nutrition.  How can I incorporate Minecraft with that?  I decided that we do some research into what food items in Minecraft restore the most health and then have the kids build a garden that will allow them to produce those food items.

I found some wikis that contained this information specifically for Minecraft PE, through together a Custom Search Engine and let the kids begin researching.  Their intention was to figure out the best way to use a garden that 12x12 (I don't know why everything ends up being 12x12), not forgetting to make space for water!  The first lovely issue we ran into was the content filter for our district.  These sites were considered a "discussion board", thus they are blocked.

One student had the thought that we could download a Minecraft Crafting App and still find the information we needed.  I had him find one on Google Play, made sure it was safe (and free), then we worked together to download the app.  Inadvertently, the kids learned how to navigate Google Play and download an app.  This brought up conversations about permissions that Apps are granted by the user.

Once they had the App, they were off and rolling.  Using a graphic organizer to collect information and compare the various food types, then planning the locations of each block in their garden using a Google Sheet.  All of this would be simply an excuse to play Minecraft, except that they had an important writing piece to go with it.  They have to first discuss what "Good nutrition" is and then compare and contrast some of the food items that are available to them.  Finally, they must relate this to the real world and discuss how eating healthy is important for your overall health.

For this activity, we were able to incorporate many different skills.  The kids had to do research, cite their information, plan and organize the solution to a problem, and collaborate with others to accomplish a common goal.  Due to the always inevitable technology issues, we also had a chance to learn about digital privacy and how app stores work.

We are still in the process of completing this project, but pictures and descriptions will be in the next post!  I also recently received a document camera, so I hope to be able to post a video tour of one of these projects soon!