Summary Week 3

This week has been quite intense. With open house at our school and quickly returning home to enter into the virtual world of Minecraft for our weekly meeting was quite stressful.  I spent hours playing Minecraft and received my badge for emerging builder. I realized this week that all of the information that I have been learning and reading about has started to change the way that I create my lessons in the classroom and explain certain situations to parents. For example, I had a parent talk about their child’s involvement in video games at home. I asked them what kind of game. I can’t remember the name, but it was a game that made the child think of different strategies, have better hand eye coordination…etc It was like a light bulb went off in my brain. I knew exactly what the child was experiencing and how to explain to the parent, that this video game was actually wonderful for their child to do at home. I did explain there’s a time and place for everything and if their child is staying up late and playing the game, well that’s probably not a good idea.

            I have enjoyed learning how to play Minecraft. While it’s frustrating at times o.k. quite a bit! It’s also a learning experience and a fantastic adventure. I have found that when I’m playing Minecraft, my whole world stops. I can’t multitask and stop playing until all of my quests are completed. I can understand how in almost every game I have ever played in my life, they are set up for different types of players. There’s always goals to achieve, exploring to be done and possibly dying or killing off (making another player go back to start, put in jail) in the game. Most of the time there is socializing, working together to figure out how to play the game or be better at the game. Unless you’re playing the card game, war then there’s no socializing involved only achieving and killing the other person to get the most cards.

            I have worked with my peers in MinecraftEdu this week. What a fun way to socialize and bond together. I connected with my team this week on deciding on how to create our game “The Giver.” We met in a Google hangout and drum roll please my hangout worked the first time! Oh, what a relief. During our meeting we talked about what standards we wanted to include in the lesson and decided to break off into groups of two. One person will dissect the chapters and explain the vision to the other partner. The other partner will take the vision and turn it into a reality while building in Minecraft. Our mission this week is to read the book and choose three sections to share with the group. I hope everyone doesn’t choose the same sections. I also read my peers thoughts on this weeks reading and essential question and gave other articles and ideas connecting to their thoughts.