Well today was my first foray into Minecraft for education and although it was fun to explore it once I got on it took a while for me to be able to access it! I needed to enable my microsoft 360 email which I assumed was the same as the uvic email I had been using all along, turns out it was not! So once I realized my mistake I quickly went onto the university website and enabled the right email but then I was stuck with the image below for the majority of the class with the words ‘pending activation’ taunting me while my peers played with Minecraft. I was not the only one who made this mistake so my frustration was shared by a few of my classmates, but in the end, with the help of a computer tech, we were all able to get on! Yay!
So once I got onto Minecraft for education I had some fun exploring, and although it is quite simple, I still had a bit of a learning curve trying to figure out how to do everything I wanted to do. After getting some help and also spending some time exploring the game I realized that it was a very accesible game that took very little time to figure out the basic functions and allowed myself and all of my classmates to play together without to much frustration of trying to figure out the game.
So in the end, the classroom was full of laughter and giggles as we explored this game, which makes for a fun and educational friday afternoon! So many kids are playing Minecraft these days so it is important to bring in some of their interests into the learning process to engage them in a meaningful way! If you and your school are intersted in downlading this for the teachers and students go check out Minecraft for education and give it a go!
