This week in class, we had the opportunity to learn about Minecraft as an educational tool from a teacher and a group of students from a middle school.

As someone who is not particularly interested in or familiar with video games, I was very surprised by how engaging the game was. In addition, the potential for a teacher to control a game or set parameters that serve a particular task was especially appealing.

As a social studies teacher, the applications for technology like this are perhaps the most direct. We heard about a civilization building class project that allowed students to show their understanding of a particular civilization by recreating it and reflecting important elements of it in a simulated world. The concept of creating and recreating whole worlds is exciting to me because I can’t think of another platform where this could be done so directly.

I was surprised to hear that educational applications are an intentional focus for the people behind Minecraft, and that there is a whole website dedicated to the compilation of educational resources.

I am not sure if this particular game is something I will ever use in a classroom, but the presentation did emphasize to me the potential of harnessing something that students are independently engaged in. Similarly, I was impressed by how confident and comfortable the students were with stepping into a teaching role and jumping in to give us instructions.

Our recent visit to the Pacific School of Innovation and inquiry was a great experience, particularity because it was so different in virtually every way from any other school environment . The physical design of the space was particularly surprising, especially in terms of how much fit into such a small space. I was also exited about how open they were with their resources, and was very interested in their inquiry process flowchart.

The students at PSII all seemed excited to be there, more so than in any other schools I have visited. This was wonderful to see, but it also made me think about how this education model might be suited to a specific type of learner. Even the choice to attend a school like this is in itself a type of self selection, so the students who attend it have decided that this educational setup might work for them based on who they are and how they learn. I would be curious to see how a program as self-directed as this could work in a public school.

A few of us had an interesting conversation with a student about the issue of accessibility and some of the projects the student had been working on in the local community, from dealing with an inaccessible neighboring business to communicating with local politicians about policy changes. The student was also working on an accessibility themed embroidery piece as part of a collaborative project with another student who was focusing on embroidery more specifically. This was really impressive to hear about, and it sounded like the teachers at the school were doing an excellent job of facilitating these community connections while still allowing the student to take the lead.

In this week’s class, we learned a how to use a few different audio and video editing programs, all of which were new to me.

First, we tried iMovie, which is something I probably won’t use as a PC owner, but it was great to see how easy it was to quickly create movies and even work with some seemingly complicated effects. We also experimented with screencastify, which was also easy to use. This was particularly helpful for me because it’s not difficult to see how a tool like this would come in handy in the classroom.

Finally, we also worked with audacity, an audio editing program which took a little more work to figure out but was also ultimately easy to use. This was particularly helpful for me because I’ve already had the opportunity to use it for an assignment in another course. I recorded a podcast for an English Curriculum class, and but I recorded it in pieces to make it more manageable, and easier to re-record sections if necessary. Initially I was having a difficult time putting the pieces together, but I remembered working with audacity in class and it made the editing process easy. I can see how it could be applicable in the classroom, especially with the increasing popularity of podcasts.

The layout of the Audacity program

This week’s class had me considering the idea of free, open resources from a new perspective. My undergraduate experience was full of frustration over the accessibility of resources, whether they were articles behind paywalls or were sources I was hesitant to use because they did not offer enough information for a proper citation. I found this week’s exploration of open resources useful in terms of shifting my mindset away from focusing on what can’t be used to the wide range of resources that are available.

(I don’t understand this photo but I love it)

I have come across a number of excellent open resources in other classes, so I thought I would use this blog post to share a little bit about them.

As part of a social studies “Super Resource” project, I found the website Law Lessons which provides a multitude of law and civics related educational resources in addition to an entire Law course worth of detailed lesson plans. The great thing about this resource is that it has been created by the Justice Society of BC with specific consideration to the BC curriculum.

I was also introduced to a website called ReadWriteThink in my Language Arts curriculum class, which is a massive database of resources and lesson plans of all subjects.

In addition, I have been introduced to some simple teaching tools that are far simpler to use than I expected. I was particularly surprised by how easy it was to embed photos from flickr into materials (like these blog posts). I also had the opportunity to learn how to use the program twine, which was shockingly simple to navigate even for someone like me with virtually no knowledge of coding.

A major concern I had when exploring the new curriculum was what I would base lessons on given the shift away from prescribed content. However, I have quickly learned that all the resources I could need are out there, and are far easier to find and use than I would have anticipated.

This week, we explored an alternative model of learning through the film “Most Likely to Succeed”, which followed students from High Tech High through long term, interdisciplinary, and challenging projects.

I had some experience with project based learning in high school where I had the opportunity to put together some mock elections and host local prospective members of parliament at an even for students. This was an incredibly valuable experience, but was done through a class outside of the regular school timetable so the vast majority of students did not have the same opportunity.

Something that I wanted to know more about was the difference between simply doing projects and project based learning. I was able to find a video that provided an excellent breakdown of the differences. In particular, it explained that regular projects are most often used to reflect on what has already been learned, whereas project-based learning positions the project itself as the primary learning experience.

I am super excited about project based learning, not only in terms of its potential to help students explore ideas on a deeper level, but also in terms of its potential to teach other skills like team management.