Week 4 Reflection

This week has by far been the busiest. First I have had many parent conferences, google hangouts and regular meetings. Then my husband and I received news that we could move into our new house this weekend! So, many hours this weekend has been put to moving boxes, furniture and settling into our new home!

I found this week that I have become more familiar with using Minecraft. I am starting to learn about the privileges in teacher mode. I think it’s important when creating our MOOC to know sides, student and teacher. This will help us understand how to create our MOOC to better suite our students. I am starting to build a lot quicker and find strategies that help me in Minecraft. I have found there are a lot of tools to observe if learning is occurring. The most important tool is ENGAGEMENT. Our district has announced that this year they are only looking for student engagement with teachers evaluations. Our principal will evaluate us on all domains, but pay close attention to student engagement. If students’ are not engaged, then what was the point to the lesson?

This is the same for Minecraft and Minecraftedu, if students are not engaged, will they want to build or play Minecraft? Will they want to explore and learn new strategies or work with other peers? The answer is, no. Students need to be engaged. When students are engaged, learning will occur. The other tool I found most important is assessments. Assessments can be tests, observations of students learning, questions to students and rubrics. Thomas had a great idea of having students be assessed by levels. Students who achieve a certain level will be graded on the following. Every student learns differently. It’s important we assess our students from their ability. Mia had a suggestion of giving a dedicated area in Minecraft for students. This lets students work with their peers, focus on a certain task or goal and allow the teacher to observe the students.

I’m looking forward to discussing with my group this week on what we want our students to focus on. I think once we decide on an objective it will be easy to have standards and goals for our students to focus on when playing in Minecraft.