Saturday 29 September 2012

Introduction

I am Andrew. I am 15 years old in grade 9 at an IB school in Finland. Throughout this year I have to do a project that is personal, something related to my hobbies and passions outside of school. So, for my project, I will be using my favourite game (Minecraft) to be what I want to be when I am older (a maths teacher). Most Tuesdays throughout this year, I will be teaching my mum's 1st grade class maths using a mod for Minecraft called MinecraftEdu. This gives extra blocks, functions and opportunities within Minecraft to make it more suitable for learning and teaching. I have already taught one lesson in which the students learned how to move, jump, place and break blocks. This week, they are looking at perspective. I will take one third of the class this week, another third the week after and the last third the week after that, to play through the map I have made for them to learn about patterns and perspective. 



The children will spawn in the small square in the bottom left of the picture and then they will be individually teleported to the first area - the long strips. Here they will be given the appropriate blocks and will have to carry on the pattern. When they think they are ready and I say it is correct, they will be taken to the next area. 

In that area they must look at the shapes (the ones made of the white blocks) and then think how many blocks have been used for the shape in front of them. You can see that each shape is different. This is so that everyone has their own shape and it will prevent cheating and copying from their partner. Then when they have finished they will be sent into the final area. Here they will draw what the house looks like from each side of it. 

When they have finished everything, the remaining time of the lesson will be free time. Here they can chop down trees and play as they wish.



Everyone can take an axe and play to their hearts content!

5 comments:

  1. I like your project, Andrew! I'm a history teacher in Norway and have used Minecraft in history projects, having the students building middle age architecture. I believe, however, opportuinties in maths are even greater with Minecraft. Looking forward to following your project. Keep blogging :)

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    1. Thanks for reading! I think building is also a very good way of learning as obviously it is what Minecraft is all about. Also you have to learn the different styles so for example with the Ancient Greeks, use a lot of big pillars. May I ask how you found my blog?

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    2. I first found you on twitter. Dont remember how, perhaps because of the minecraftedu hashtag.

      Its fun to read how your student councellor was coubtful of your gaming project at first, but changed her mind. You have a great advantage over most teachers tryin the same, in that you started out playing for fun. I hope you manage to keep that energy when you develop the educational puzzles.

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  2. I love your project! I found your blog on Twitter. I'm excited that schools are starting to use gaming in education. Some of our kids are home-schooled and some are in public education, but in both cases we help reinforce their education through gaming, especially Minecraft.
    We actually just started offering Minecraft server hosting as a suggestion from our kids. We own our own IT company and host cloud applications for large companies. We set our kids up on those same type of enterprise servers to play and learn, and invite their friends to play. They played just a few minutes with no lag or hiccups, they've been ecstatic ever since.

    If you ever want to test it out let me know. http://www.minecraftdedicatedservers.com

    Please keep up the good work on your project! Kuddos!

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    1. Thanks for reading! I am also very interested in a Minecraft Server for me and my friends. I have been looking around a lot recently and as I just tried one company they went down for maintenance. Will definitely take a look at this! :D

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