Part 1:
An effective minecraft lesson should include the following elements to be most effective for all participants.
– Students should have ownership and autonomy over their work. It should be child led, with teacher there as a facilitator adn for support, but the students hould have creative control.
– 21st century skills need to be used (self-regulation, real worlds problem solving, use of ICT for learning, Skilled communication, knowledge construction, collaboration)
– There should be links made with the curricular content of the students school day.
Part 2
Our school has a laptop cart that goes around he school. It is a very large school and the computers could do with some upgrading. There is a push at the moment for our staff to up skill and look and reflect on how with engage the students in ICT in the classroom. There are 70 Kindle fires in the school.
There are two Ipads in the ASD unit as well.
All teachers have a laptop and there is a IWB in each classroom. I think as a school we need to improve our engagement with ICT and i look forward to bringing this back with me in September. A number of students access additional support and use Lexia literacy program.
In the ASD class where i am currently posted I use the following programs Teacher my monster to read, reading eggs, maths seeds, matific, lexia, Seesaw. I use Seesaw as a communication journal parents. Since the lockdown happened the children have also been using seesaw and i can see this continuing for homework next year.
There is a coding after school club. I would like to create an after school club for minecraft education next year and hope to implement it with the support of my co-worker who i did this course with.
I have put in a request with our IT team to investigate if we have Minecraft, and if not, if we can get it on the laptops for the students.