Month: March 2020

In today’s class, we had the opportunity to learn about using Minecraft in an educational setting from Heidi James. We began by logging into the desktop and having a few minutes to explore and try Minecraft. I personally had a bit of trouble in the beginning as I got stuck in the water and could not figure out how to get out. Fortunately, some of the students from the middle school came around and were able to help me. 

After a few minutes of “play” time, we learned a little bit about the boundaries and possibilities of Minecraft Edu. As the teacher, you have the ability to control everything and anything that occurs in your Minecraft server. I was surprised to see that she was able to freeze our screens so that no one had the chance to be distracted by our screens. There are two different modes of Minecraft; creative and survival. 

One of the students discussed how they were assigned to create a civilization during a certain time period. They were asked to create buildings and scenarios that would reflect the feudalism era. Another student built a life-size hedgehog cage which utilizes perimeter, area, and ratio skills. Some other options the teacher discussed were combining Minecraft and language arts to create landscapes for stories. Also, in Science, they had students re-create a human digestive system.

In the image above, you will see a variety of subject areas with Minecraft lesson plans divided into various grades. I found one called “Fairy Tale Reimagined” which allows students in grade’s k-5 to recreate fairytales in the world of Minecraft. This is a great tool for teachers to use and provide a creative outlet for students. Overall, I can see how Minecraft can be a beneficial educational tool. However, I currently do not feel comfortable using Minecraft in the classroom as I am not familiar enough with it yet.

– Ms. G 🙂

For today’s class, we began by debriefing the field trip to Rebecca’s class last week and then moved into multimedia learning theory. Multimedia learning theory is about the process in which we remember things and how things are regulated into our working memory. In our EDCI 336 course, Rich encourages “learning by doing” and in class, we have many opportunities to try new technological things. When the class is over, we blog about our experiences to reaffirm our learning and understanding. That repetition of a skill helps the brain to be more likely to internalize the information and be able to recall it at a later date. One resource that is proven to be useful is “Sketchnotes”. While I have never used the program before, the concept is to draw pictures along with your written notes which will help with memory recall. Our class will be trying this program in the next couple of weeks and I am very interested to see how this might be implemented into the classroom. 

Moving on, our class began to discuss how educational videos can be utilized in the classroom. Three possible video platforms that teachers can use are “Youtube” “Khan Academy” and “TeacherTube”. Some reasons why using videos in the class is beneficial is that videos can be engaging, offer new perspectives, and help to show concepts or things that may not be accessible based on the school (ie. students do a project on Egypt and want to see the pyramids). However, there are some cons which come with videos is that not everyone has access to technology, students may not be engaged with the video, or students may choose to not watch the video. It is important to remember that if you are going to use videos in the classroom, make sure they are suitable and relevant to the lesson you are teaching. 

Afterwards, we practiced using “Screencastify” to screen record our computers to show students how to use the computer to look something up. In the video below, I used the example of sloths as my screen recording. If I were to make this into the inquiry project, I would have students initially watch a video of sloths in the Costa Rican jungle to illicit excitement into the subject. Then, I would have students do some primary introductory research to learn a base level about sloths. Once they know a bit of information, I would have the students develop an inquiry question about sloths. This could be like “what do sloths eat? where do sloths live? how do sloths climb?” and so on. 

– Ms. G 🙂

Last Tuesday, my EDCI 336 class had the opportunity to visit Rebecca Bathurst’s kindergarten classroom and learn about how she incorporates technology and inquiry with her students. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend in person as I was in Vancouver that day, however, I had the opportunity to view her speech via video and hear her perspective. She began her presentation by discussing a bit about her background in teaching and her experiences prior to teaching at George Jay. 

One of the first things Rebecca discusses is her “educator heart”. Her “educator heart” is essentially the morals and values that she upholds as a teacher. The image below shows a diagram of some of her core beliefs and goals that she aims to express in the classroom. 

Rebecca then began to discuss how she implements inquiry-based learning into her classroom. With the students this year, they began with a guided/controlled inquiry which was much more structured than my original interpretation of an inquiry project. The image below was in Rebecca’s PowerPoint and I feel that it gives a great visual of various types of inquiry.

The first inquiry that the class did was on their families. From there, she discovered that her students were passionate about dinosaurs and then created a guided-inquiry based on them. She also discussed how she used provocations by providing an experience that would spark curiosity in the student. An example could be taking the students on a field trip then asking them “what they see, what they already know, and what they want to know”. This would be the starting point of the inquiry project and from there, the students would work towards answering their inquiry question. 

The last thing I noticed while watching was how beautiful and natural Rebecca’s classroom was. The class had lots of wood-based items and things that create a calming space. She also had lots of dinosaur items for students as they are relevant to the current inquiry project the students are studying.

Overall, I really liked how Rebecca incorporated inquiry-based learning in her classroom!

-Ms. G 🙂