A Student Perspective on Minecraft EDU

student-created Minecraft civilizations

After students had completed their Minecraft civilization projects for Mr. Obach's Grade 8 Social Studies class, I asked them to share feedback with me.   This is the first time we've used MinecraftEDU for a classroom project, so I was curious to see what students had to say about their experience.








Here are Kylin's responses to my questions (shared with her permission):

Describe your Minecraft project in 2-3 sentences.  What were you trying to do/show/learn?

We were to make an imaginary civilization with a partner. Our imaginary civilization included a temple, houses, a river, farmland, forest. We used Minecraft to show what our imaginary civilization looked like. 

Positives: What were some of the things you liked about this project?  What are some advantages of using Minecraft for this project? What did you learn?

I liked having the freedom to create a 3D representation of a civilization that was created through imaginary. It was cool because we worked for about 3 hours on our civilization. After three hours of work it was cool to see it coming together, walk through it and see all the things you made.

The main advantage was that once you think up things you can just build it in Minecraft. There are no limits to creativity. You can just think of something and you can build it. If we were to be working on the same thing, it is easier because it would be done faster instead of one person working on it. If we were working on separate things, after you finished something or one person finished something you can immediately start working on other things and not have to worry about finishing other buildings.

I learned that there is a lot of planning to do before you can start creating your civilization.

Challenges: What were some challenges that you faced while working on the project?  

When you first get in, we had trouble finding our partner in the world we created. We eventually found each other and once we did we got straight to work.

The amount of time we had in each class was a challenge. We only have 30 minute classes and if we were to have an hour class I think we would have had more time to add more detail.

You always had to go to the same computer or you had to scroll through your files to find the correct file.

Other: What else would you like people to know about this project? 

I definitely think other students and teachers should try something like this because it is a fun experience and.. It’s just fun! It’s a fun way to learn.

Do you need to be an expert at Minecraft to do something like this?  

No, you do not need to be an expert. It’s super easy to just build anything because all you have to know is how to place a block. That’s it. After that you just create anything with different blocks or materials.

Could MinecraftEDU be used for other projects?

Minecraft would be better for some projects than others.

Learning with Minecraft EDU

I've been learning more about Minecraft Education Edition this year and I was excited to visit a Grade 8 class where the students were using this tool for a social studies project.  Mr. Obach's class designed civilizations using Minecraft EDU to demonstrate their learning.  They were asked to address work & trade, architecture, food sources, sustainability and natural environment in their designs. Students were also expected to explain how the environment impacts the civilization.

When I was learning to use Minecraft EDU in my training sessions this fall, I was pretty slow at building and sometimes frustrated when I couldn't quite get things to work.  I failed often.  I was certainly no expert in building with Minecraft.  However, I could see the awesome potential for students to design and create with Minecraft.  I also really liked the Education Edition add-ons such as the camera, book & quill to make it easy for students to document their learning.  

When I met with the Grade 8 class, some of them had previous experience with Minecraft and some did not.  We introduced Minecraft EDU and gave students a bit of time to try it out.  I was impressed with how quickly and easily all students learned the tool and got right to creating their designs.  When I visited the Grade 8s again, they were efficiently collaborating with a partner in a "shared world" to build different elements of their civilizations.  When I asked those students who hadn't used Minecraft about their experience, they told me that they'd found it was easy to get started and fun for them, even though they'd had to figure out a new tool. 

During one classroom visit, students gave me a "tour" of what they'd built .  I was blown away!  They had created incredibly detailed and thoughtful projects.  They explained reasons for creating their civilizations in certain ways and told me about various elements they'd included.  Here are a few pictures of what I got to see that day:

"While I was working on my civilization, I had a lot of fun. I had fun exploring the world I chose and there were so many areas to choose from. Advantages of using this would be that you could let your mind go wild. I really enjoyed working on Minecraft." - Grade 8 student

As part of their assignment, students used the camera and Book & Quill features in Minecraft EDU to document and share their learning.   Check out a few samples from their documentation and notice the variety of elements that were included in their civilizations.

Designing Digital Posters with Binscarth Grade 7/8

I had the opportunity to work with an awesome group of Grade 7 and 8 students at Binscarth School last week.  This group of students used Canva to design digital posters related to the concepts they are studying in science class.   The posters turned out really well, so I asked students for permission to share their work here on my blog - you can see their designs below!

Designing digital posters is about more than just learning to use technology tools.  This project integrated important Literacy with ICT skills and science knowledge.  

• We began by co-constructing criteria for our work, which relates to LwICT outcome P-1.2 participates in establishing criteria for own work. 

• Next, students had to select a concept/term from their science studies and develop a description/definition of the term (which links to science outcome 8-3-01 Use appropriate vocabulary related to their investigations of fluids and LwICT outcomes G-1.1 gathers information from given source(s) and G-2.1 identifies relevant information from sources)

• Then, students had to select images that related to their concept and design a poster that conveyed the meaning of their concept/word (which links to the "Produce to Show Understanding" section of our LwICT continuum, particularly P-2.1 uses a given format to demonstrate learning and P-3.1 edits work based on feedback from teacher and/or peers, according to established criteria, conventions, and/or standards). 

• The final designs turned out really great!  Plus, I think that students will be able to use their knowledge of how to design digital posters as a way of sharing their learning for other projects and activities.  

P.S.  Canva recently announced free premium accounts for educators - get the details here!