Each team had to work together to build a structure on their area of land, and I gave them a basic perimeter guide for it - with one class, for example, I said their structure had to be 6圆. As they had recently started with the concept of perimeter in their classrooms, on the suggestion of their classroom teachers I worked it into the lesson. I split this area up into 4 numbered areas and split my students into small teams. With my Grade 3 students, I flattened a rectangular area in the middle of a forest. Below: Three different classes, three different creations. Each group of children managed their task in a different way, and it was fascinating to see how some formed group structures and some built their structure away from the shared area. What was important about this session was that with each class I was able to have a discussion about appropriate online behaviour in a shared space, which I will talk more about later in the next post. Many students took it upon themselves to explore further and find other blocks to decorate their structures with. We talked about strategies to solve this problem. The students already knew about the unusual property of a sand block, that it will fall down without another block underneath it. The aim of the lesson was to build structures primarily using sand. I had built a blue rectangular path around the area for guidance and as a landmark.
#MINETEST ICLIP FREE#
The Training Centre world was just a randomly generated world, and outside the structure that I built the students were free to explore the world proper.įor my Grade 1 students, their next lesson started in the middle of a desert. All students were able to complete the training course within half an hour, with most kids finishing well before that. Out of all my +/- 190 students, only 2 or 3 struggled with the controls by the end of the first session. For the rest, the Training Centre was a valuable slow transition that gave them time to get used to moving with the mouse and keyboard at the same time. About a third of my students were able to race through the training in record speeds, as they were avid Minecraft players. Signs were littered everywhere so that students who wanted more information could read them as they went along. Taking ideas from what I've seen of the MinecraftEdu tutorial online, the students had to follow the blue line through tutorials on movement and interacting with the world. We discussed about how something was accidental or on purpose, and what to do if you accidentally broke a rule.Īll of my students aged 5 - 9 started off Minetest life in a custom-built obstacle course which I called the Training Centre. Most classes brought up the idea of accidents. If someone broke the rules, they were not allowed to play any more of Minetest that session. Use your real name was a rule that I added, we had a great discussion was had about nicknames and personal information but since I do already know their names as their teacher this was for practicality more than anything else. All of my classes settled on something similar to the following: This all helped to facilitate student buy-in to the rules agreement. It was important to spend the time having conversations about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, and for the guidelines to come from the players themselves. In this post I want to discuss the various activities that I organised, the worlds that I hosted and what aims I gave my students.īefore we started, each class and I formulated rules about our Minetest experience. I wrote more about the installation in my previous blog post here. It's been 3 weeks since I set up Minetest in the computer lab at school. Learning with Minetest Part 3: Impact on the Students Learning with Minetest Part 2: Activities and Aims Learning with Minetest Part 1: Rolling out Minetest in Pre-Primary
#MINETEST ICLIP SERIES#
This blog post is part of a series of posts exploring the concept of using the Minetest game as a learning platform in a primary school.
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