Real Estate in Minecraft

Real Estate in Minecraft

Ok, so the first lesson we did made sure that all Learners had the same basic skills to navigate and create in Minecraft.

This lesson in Minecraft Education Edition was all about helping learners and their families realise the educational potential of Minecraft. The lesson was based in Starter Town – a lovely little world with some basic civics buildings and 30 numbered empty blocks of land – just waiting for eager builders!

Students negotiated amongst themselves on land selection, and were given two lessons to build, fit out and photograph their property.  (They won’t always need that long, but many of the students are still adjusting to the controls on Macbooks). The whole lesson was outlined in OneNote to ensure that learners stayed on track.  I’ve shared the overall lesson plan here (just look for the page called ‘Starter Town – Real Estate’.) . The Learning Intentions are shown in the image below.

Learners created such diverse houses – from castles to mansions, to mushroom cottages, to log cabins to glass houses.  Infinity pools, cinemas, fireplaces, libraries – all included.

This is where it got educational – learners had to create a sales pitch for their property, based on real estate adverts, then create and publish a tri-fold brochure.  We used the website Canva, which has a brilliant range of easy to use templates.  Just make sure that students don’t accidentally include any paid features – they can’t download their work if they do.. The completed products were very impressive, and I discovered creative flair that I hadn’t suspected lived within some of the students.  Below is one of my Learner’s brochures.  I love his use of colours, photos of unique features and range of adjectives used.

Brochures were printed double sided, and then trimmed, folded and sent home – with strict instructions to share immediately with parents. The verbal feedback that I received from parents was very positive – their children were coming home excited about their day, babbling about Minecraft, and excitedly thrusting brochures under their noses.  Students that were usually reluctant writers were incredibly keen to explain the features of their property, and to justify the hefty price tags attached!  Everyone could instantly see the educational value of Minecraft – in this instance, it was used as a prompt to inspire literacy.

A win-win-win situation if ever I saw one – happy learners, happy parents, happy me!  Next lesson will be looking at the Civics buildings that are in Starter Town.  I can’t wait!

Class Compliments

Class Compliments

I’ll admit it – I was having a grouchy kind of morning.  You know, the kind where you haven’t slept properly, where there was no milk for your tea, rain was threatening – nothing Earth shattering – just a little black cloud over my head.

I had a Keeping Them Safe – Child Protection lesson planned. Part of the lesson involved writing down nice things about your classmates.

I’d come across the perfect little activity on Seesaw.  It’s called Classmate Compliments. Simple really – children open up Seesaw, take a selfie (with a fair amount of background room), then leave their computers open, and move around the room, writing down something nice on ten different computers.

I gave some pretty clear instructions…

  • You don’t have to be friends with everyone, but you do have to be friendly with everyone – kind words only.
  • Challenge yourself – don’t write on your best friend’s picture – you tell them how awesome they are all the time – pick people outside of your close friends.
  • Mix it up – boys, girls, different year level to you.
  • Don’t just write about looks – you’ve been in a Village with these people for at least six months – go deeper.

There was a buzz and excitement in the room that is usually reserved for Minecraft lessons. My slightly-sarcastic, little-bit-jaded, too-cool-for-school Year 4s and 5s forgot to pretend to be blasé, and got right into it. I overheard some of the kids saying, “This is fun!  I like this!” At the end of the session, they all excitedly went back to their computers.  They mouthed the words to themselves at first, then the tentative smiles turned into grins, and the grins into excited shouts.  “People think I’m smart?”  “You really are funny!”  “Someone said I’m inclusive, and that I’m a good friend!”  My little black cloud began to lighten – and I found myself smiling.

“Who’s feeling a little bit special right now?”  I asked. Every hand went up. They were all grinning from ear to ear.

In demonstrating, I had taken a selfie, and left my computer open too.  You’ll have to excuse the photo – remember, I hadn’t slept well, had almost no make-up on, and the overcast morning came with a healthy dose of bad-hair-day wind.  But, the results, well, they speak for themselves!

My little black cloud evaporated instantly, and I had to read the words through happy tears. I looked up to find everyone smiling at me. “You have the most words Sarah!” “Yeah, everyone was lining up to write on your photo.”

I looked at my kids and smiled, “I really do love you guys.”

PS – My son is one of my students – hence the ‘Great Mum’ comment!

PPS – I’m pretty good at flossing – the kids taught me on school camp!

Fakebooking it

Fakebooking it

History is one of my favourite subjects – it always has been ever since a high school teacher made trenches out of tables in class and pretended to machine gun us with his metre ruler to demonstrate trench warfare in WWI.

But, by the end of the Semester, my learners and I were getting a bit drained.  According to the Australian Curriculum for Year 5, we still needed to look at a significant person who helped to shape an Australian colony.  Colony influencers if you will.  This sparked an idea.  Who would my learners consider as influencers?  Most of them were people that had a heavy social media presence. Then, I found a wonderful free educational tool called Fakebook.

So here’s what we did.  I gave them a list of ‘colony influencers’ and then they conducted research, which could then be turned into posts as though their influencer was living in modern times.  It’s a pretty cool website to use.  Posts are written, and then you can make their ‘friends’ comment.  Pictures, links and videos can all be inserted.

The friends list and hobby list can also be updated.  It has a neat search feature which finds photos linked to the name of the person that you enter, which is usually pretty accurate – it can be changed as necessary though.

Fakebook, being a teaching tool even came with an assessment rubric, which I tweaked to suit the project.  My learners and I had a lot of fun with this tool, as while they were learning history, and working on timelines, they also got to show off their senses of humour. (Such as Lord Sydney throwing a party when Sydney got named after him, as announced by Governor Arthur Philip on his Fakebook account!

Two of the complete Fakebook posts made by my learners can be found here.

Caroline Chisholm and Governor Arthur Phillip.

We were also able to have quite a few thought provoking discussions about social media, cyber safety, and keeping safe online.

A couple of tips:

  • Make sure that learners write their posts and comments somewhere else first, such as in OneNote or on Word.  Then they can copy and paste them directly.  Fakebook won’t save a page until five posts have been created, so this was the best way to ensure that work in progress wasn’t lost.
  • A unique URL is created for each Fakebook page.  Learners need to copy and paste this somewhere safe to make sure that they can return to the page again, and more importantly – so it can be assessed!
  • The page will be password protected so that only authorised people can edit the page.  Again, make sure this password is put somewhere safe!

I’ll definitely use Fakebook again in the future.  It was fun, different, and had my learners re-enthused about doing research and turning facts into something that related more to their own lives.  I wonder if there is a fake Twitter or Instagram out there?

 

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