Teaching with Minecraft -- For the Gifted, for Aspergers, for Autism, and for the Parents who wonder if Minecraft is actually useful

Today I am collecting stories and links relating to the use of Minecraft in educating those of us whom one of my friends (who self identifies) calls 'quirky'-- these include kids on 'the spectrum' -- aspergers, autism, gifted kids (who do, in fact, fall under the umbrella of  'special ed' kids). Kids with Add and ADHD are a whole 'nother category and OH! is there a debate of over that! Regardless, these kids find a common ground in Minecraft as the following articles demonstrate.  Parents and teachers can use this ground to direct and educate their students'interests.

1)How Minecraft taught my Nine year old son with Aspergers to Read and Write

2) Here is a site aimed at helping kids with Aspergers in particular through the development of IT skils

3) Here is a server that claims to be for Autistic and Asperger folks -- haven't vetted it, so cannot speak to it.

4) Here is another server dedicated to kids on the Autism spectrum.

5) Here is an article that turns the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder on its head.

6) Journey in a Gifted Classroom -- for Minecraft with Gifted kids

7) Why Minecraft is great for Gifted Kids

8)Tomorrow's Entrepreneurs are playing Minecraft today

9) Lesson plans for Gifted Kids Minecraft

Happy Crafting!

Teaching with Minecraft -- Part Five, safe places to play and learn

This post is a little different. I know that all parents are concerned with safety these days, both out in the real world and here, in the virtual world. So, while searching for lesson plans and blogs, I found myself encountering some interesting sites -- sites aimed specifically at that issue. I am listing them here and intend to check them out. I will say, up front, that I have not done so yet.

1)Massively Minecraft  -- this is the first place that I have encountered. I have registered for it. It is a whitelisted server and claims to be a 'safe place for kids and parents'.  I found the following review of it: 

"There are definitely kid-safe public and semi-public Minecraft servers (called “whitelisted” servers because would-be players have to apply to join). One I know well is the Australia-based Massively @ Jokaydia (formerly Massively Minecraft). With 500 registered users worldwide, it’s run by educators who call it a Minecraft Guild for parents as well as kids (aged 4-16). Parents are welcome to participate, and everybody learns. See the citizenship and social- and media-literacy skills represented in this list of 10 kinds of learning that this server aims to help players develop in Minecraft). But this is informal learning for parents and young people (“no teaching or lessons allowed in the game”). It’s also free (donations “gratefully accepted”), but there’s an application that people fill out to join" Net Family News

2) For those who have children interested in playing other servers, here is a list of white list servers -- whitelist servers are those for which you have to apply.  Applicants are vetted and approved. There are usually rules by which players are expected to abide -- no griefing being primary. As always, parental oversight is advisedWhitelist Minecraft Servers

3) Here is an article listing several family friendly Minecraft servers.

4) Minecraft and Internet Safety

5) Interncraften

Happy Crafting!!

Teaching with Minecraft - Part Four, Teaching Math

And I am back -- Teaching with Minecraft and this time I want to look at teaching math with Minecraft. I had mentioned that one could teach ratios and proportions with Minecraft -- asking students to create 'to scale' buildings when they are creating their historical replicas. But there are other applications, surely, after all, Minecraft uses blocks -- much the way that Singapore, Math-U-See and Miquon maths do. So I went hunting and the list below is the fruit of my mining. I hope that you will find it useful:

1) This first is a You-tube video: Maths in Minecraft (Area, Perimeter, Volume)

This particular You-tube video comes from a blogger who has created a world called 'Mathlandia'.  He writes a Minecraft Educational blog:

2) Minecraft Elfie

3) A similar project for teaching perimeter and area uses both legos and minecraft can be found Here (Actually I found this amusing as my own children came up with this particular lesson all on their own one rainy day when the power went out. They created their Minecraft world in legos and when the power came back up, they took their careful lego constructions to the computer and 'rebuilt' them, brick by brick into Minecraft'...)

4)Another Area and Perimeter lesson plan

5)General ideas for Minecraft blocks math

6)Minecraft Maths

7)Minecraft and Math - STEM  -- again, a list of suggested uses for Minecraft in math applications

8)MInecraft in Education -- More than just Maths, of course

9)Examples of Minecraft Math Projects

10) Minecraft Math Youtube -- calculus garden

11)Scrib: minecraft-problem-posing-subtraction-core-questions

      12)Scrib: Minecraft-Problem-Posing-Subtraction-Teacher-Copy -- please note, there is a fee to download from Scrib.

13)Minecraft Math

(And in an update to the previous 'Teaching with Minecraft' post, on programming, I found the following link: SriptCraftJC which will allow simple Minecraft programming in JavaScript)

Actually, I had a very exciting idea for some lesson plans of my own while reading through these articles. I  am going to work them up and try them out and if they pass muster, I will post them as well. In the mean while.... Happy crafting!

Teaching with Minecraft -- Minecraft Glogs

Teaching With Minecraft -- Minecraft Glogs

I am an inveterate digger -- constantly mining for new ways of collecting information and in my search I discovered 'glogging'-- Visual blogs of links to other sites. Below, then, is a list of the Minecraft Glogs that I have begun to create. (As you can imagine, there are many, many, MANY You-tube videos on HOW to do Minecraft. The process of sifting through them is a slow and painful one. Creating Glogs, therefore, takes a certain amount of time. Please, bear with me!)

1) Minecraft Tutorials for the PC

2)Minecraft Tutorials for the Xbox

I should add, these Glogs are aimed primarily at teaching people how to DO Minecraft and not so much at teaching WITH Minecraft. My purpose in including them in this series of posts is that, if you intend to teach with a tool, it does actually help to play around with the tool... And besides (grin) I am enough of a geek to enjoy the game for its own sake!

Happy Crafting all. I shall return to providing you with truly 'Educational' links in my next posting.

Teaching with Minecraft -- Part Three

You might think, at my advanced age, that I would be immune to surprise -- I have, after all, encountered IRA gunmen during a bank robbery in Dublin, fallen off a ticketing counter in Hong Kong, been swept into a sewer during a hurricaine in Taiwan, almost had my car washed off a coast road on Oahu during another hurricaine, run the hills of Aberystwyth in Wales... but still, I find myself wide eyed with wonder at the many amazing things that fill this world -- and one of the most awe inspiring of these for me (given my geekish tendencies!) is the depth and breadth of the internet. The sheer volume of information -- both good and bad -- that can be found on the web is astonishing. And so, I come to you with yet more information on teaching with Minecraft... Today's post will focus on teaching computer programming since that is my own personal focus today:

1)How to Program a Minecraft Plugin  -- first up, from our friends at Planet Minecraft is the following blog post.

2)Young Person's Guide to Programming Minecraft  -- Now this particular approach is for those who want to dive in and get started. It is not a ground up, make sure you know the details sort of teaching. That said, some folks do prefer this.      

       

      a) Click HERE to get ScriptCraft 

3) JAVA Programming Tutorial - 1 - Installing the JDK The New Boston Java tutorials on Youtube are the ones recommended by KHAN academy's coding folks. There are other people on Youtube who specifically coffer Java programming for Minecraft such as:

   

      a)How to make your own Minecraft Plugin and Learn JAVA the easy way

      b)Simple JAVA plugin tutorial Episode 1

      c)Java | How to make a Minecraft 1.6.2 Bukkit Server Plugin | Part 1

      d)Learn to program via Minecraft and other games

4) For those who want a more basic JAVA course, here is a free Learn Java site

5) And, if you already know something about programming, here is a free JavaScript for Beginners site

As this is the Internet, there are sure to be many, many more adventures to come! Happy daze!

Teaching with Minecraft -- Part Two

Teaching with Minecraft -- Part Two

And so the listing continues:

Here are more links for you to follow --

1) This first is an article -- we ourselves have worked on building Shakespeare's Globe in Minecraft.(It is a challenging project and best done over a term and as a group project.)  I also like the periodic table of the elements assignment -- but then, I am a science and math nerd and am married to a scientist so, smile, you can take that with a pinch of salt!: http://blog.k12.com/educational-technology-and-tools/transforming-way-we-learn-why-minecraft-amazing-learning-tool#.UhtgURtONs0

2) Speaking specifically to the question of MinecraftEDU -- here is an article from Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/minecraft-in-classroom-andrew-miller  -- please note the comment about using Minecraft to teach ration and proportion -- it is on often overlooked by teachers but one that Minecraft does very well. The use of blocks can be mimiced by the use of 1 block legos or by other 'real' world bricks.

3)Betcha never thought of this as an application in Minecraft: http://gettingsmart.com/2013/01/how-minecraft-is-teaching-a-generation-about-teamwork-the-environment/ -- Environmental education and scarce resources as well as cooperative learning! In survival mode, Minecraft is a game par excellence for these skills AND, if you have kids who are 'HUNGER GAMES' fans, there are MODS ( Go here) which will allow your students to play the games -- which you can then turn into discussions about the book/movie/game. There is A LOT of material there, believe me.

4) The following is an article by a student whose instructor used MinecraftEdu -- I include it so that you can see what is being done and how students are reacting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shajed-ahmed/minecraft-computer-game_b_3579651.html

5)http://teachingwithminecraftedu.blogspot.com/ -- a Minecraft teaching blog

6)http://www.examiner.com/article/minecraft-homeschool-incredible-educational-minecraft-inspiration-from-all-over -- this is another collection of weblinks to Minecraft teaching ideas. Yippee!!! Rabbit trails!

7)https://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/introducing_kids_to_java_programming  -- and this, of course, was my FIRST teaching idea, using Minecraft to introduce and encourage the learning of programming skills... the kids learn anyway but not in an organized manner. Here is a more directed suggestion.

Now I am off to get more coffee. Have fun until next we meet.

Teaching with Minecraft -- A Blog list, Part One

Teaching with Minecraft -- A blog list, part one.

Per a request from friends who are interested in learning more about teaching children with that wonderful but terrible game, Minecraft, I have begun to create the following list of blogs. These are blogs that I have found which are devoted to the teaching of various school subjects and which use Minecraft as a tool for doing so. If you, dear reader, have any blogs that you think should be added to this list, please, feel free to let me know -- I will be more than happy to update this list. It is most definitely a work in progress.

1) http://minecraftteacher.tumblr.com/
(borrowed from his blog page)

AboutThe Minecraft Teacher

My name is Joel Levin. I am a computer teacher at a private school in New York City. This blog chronicles my foray into usingMinecraft in the classroom. The results were far from expected. 

I am also the co-owner of TeacherGaming LLC, creators of MinecraftEdu the official version of Minecraft designed for teachers and students. 

Follow me on Twitter @MinecraftTeachr

E-mail me at joel@minecraftteacher.net

Watch my videos on YouTube

2)http://gamingedus.org/

(borrowed from their page)

This wiki is a storehouse of resources, ideas and fun stuff for a small group of educators using video games with their students.

Currently, our goal is to introduce educators to the video game Minecraft and help them learn how to use  the game with their students.

We run two Minecraft servers: a Professional Play server for teachers to learn Minecraft and the Multi-School Server, for teachers to play Minecraft with their students and other schools around the world.

We are actively seeking new members for both servers. Interested? Read on and see how you can join in the fun and learning!

3)http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/math-physic-languages-minecraft-is-the-teachers-ultimate-multi-tool/

A little bit of reassurance on the Homeschool Path

Last week, my sons and I and some friends went to visit a homestead museum. On that Pioneer Farm Park, was the one room school house, complete with posted school rules:

The children were fascinated by the desks and the school, less so by the rules -- which was made clear by the fact that, when we returned home, the two youngers immediately set to work writing their own set of school rules. Interesting then, to see the following infographic which is currently making the rounds of all the various media.

Source: TopMastersInEducation.com
Of course, we don't use the homestead school rules -- laugh. Our version of rules are closer to our children's. But it is reassuring to know that what we are doing, homeschooling, is not so very odd and that it has a history and a future of success. Sometimes it is not so easy to see the forest for the trees.