You may have seen the above video floating around from the PBS Idea Channel, posing the question of whether the video game Minecraft is the “Ultimate Education tool“. With over 200,000 views and over 6500 likes, it got me wondering how many of these viewers have actually seen Minecraft being used in the classroom? Before last week, I hadn’t — which made a recent opportunity even more exciting.  Part of our e-Learning for Educators team was invited to visit a local elementary school to see how they’ve been using Minecraft — and what I saw was pretty inspiring.

To give you an idea of what it is like to play Minecraft, it has been described as “first person legos” mixed with “The Sims” (and maybe with a few other games thrown in). The game is considered a “sandbox” game with an open world, giving players a large amount of freedom when it comes to playing the game.  In the standard version of Minecraft, there are four different modes to the game: survival, creative, adventure, and hardcore. While not all of the modes of the standard version are ideal for educational use, there is an educational version of the game called MinecraftEdu that was created for teachers by teachers.

During our visit, we observed a second grade class using the standard Minecraft‘s “creative mode” to collaboratively build an interactive world. The students were divided into four groups, with each group being assigned a time period to create within Minecraft together — but each at their own computer. When creating their worlds, they had to think about what to include and what to build, making sure to justify why they included what they did.

Players have the ability to leave signs throughout their worlds. In this project, students used signs to ask questions or to clarify what they were building.

Here’s a little rundown of the time periods and what I saw:

• 1850: I learned from a couple students that they were currently reading the Little House on the Prairie books, which I believe was the inspiration for this time period. This world was complete with a dry goods store, pigs (and other farm animals) and other period appropriate creations. One student in this group was building a “dugout” house and confidently explained to me what it was and why it was there!
• 1950: The school we visited was built around1950, so students had to think about how their city was different in 1950. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see much of this time period.
• 2013: Students had to recreate Columbia in the present. I was given a “tour” of the school as it is today (in Minecraft, of course) and the local grocery store (I think it was a Gerbes). I believe I even spotted the local mall!
• Future: I didn’t get an exact date for this time period, but I think it may have been  around 50 years in the future. According to their teacher, this was the time period the students had the hardest time with. I did see buildings equipped with “solar panels” (while Minecraft doesn’t have solar panels yet within the game, they designated materials to stand in for solar panels) and other evidence of a future of renewable energy, giving you an idea of how this project is getting their mental wheels turning.

Future: The glass ceiling of this building was meant to represent solar panels.

Watching the engagement in this classroom was amazing — the students enjoyed what they were doing and, based on my conversations with them, they were definitely practicing some higher-level thinking. This doesn’t mean there were no hitches. At times, it seemed difficult to get them to stop building in their worlds. Despite these minor issues, I could really see the future of this software having a place in education. While I’m not sure about it being the “ultimate tool”, Minecraft is proving to be a unique and rewarding addition to the classroom.

This is just one way of how Minecraft is being used with students. Check out MinecraftEdu‘s Real-world Example page to see more great ways this software is already being used in the classroom.

What are your thoughts on Minecraft as the “Ultimate Education Tool”? In what ways do you see yourself using Minecraft with your students?

[This post was provided by Zoë Hyatt, an instructional developer for the eMINTS National Center and eLearning for Educators.]

Images can be used to make us laugh, cry, think, reflect, and ask those higher level questions. Plus, students love taking pictures of themselves and their classmates. How can we use images to reflect on the school year?
Getting Started…

First, have students do an internet search for inspirational posters.  Looking at examples will help to get those creative juices flowing.  Next, have students take a picture(s) or locate images that communicates their answers to a question prompt. Then, challenge them to create a caption for their image that communicates their answers in a limited number of words or characters. This will help to emphasize the importance of effective communication and create a positive atmosphere for creativity. Here are a few example question prompts…

• What advice would you give to upcoming students?
• Where are you now compared to the beginning of the year?
• How has your teacher helped you become a better person?
• What has influenced your thinking the most?
• What do you now know about _________ ?

The final step is to create their posters. Below are just a few resources to assist in creating and editing images.

• Google Drive’s “Draw”
• Picmonkey
• iPiccy
• Pixlr
• Ribbet
• MeMe Creator
• Smore

For even more ways to “End the School Year in Style”, check out eMINTS eIS Jen Fosters’s eMINTS Classroom Strategies blog.

What other strategies might educators use to engage and energize students?

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[This post was provided by Amy Blades, an instructional specialist for the eMINTS National Center.]  *Image provided by Pics4Learning

eMINTS National Center Conference 2013 Presentation Links

At the conference website you can access presentations, websites, links, and more. This is a great way to follow up on presentations that you may have attended or wanted to attend.

Feel free to share these wonderful resources with your personal learning network. If you want to see how other eMINTS educators may be using these resources, try adding a question to the eMINTS discussion list. The discussion list is a great way to connect with other educators and to stay current on news and events.  All discussions are archived by month for convenient access and viewing.

If you are looking for other ways to stay connected or are in need of some ideas for projects, here are some other ways to be apart of the educational community.

• Twitter – check out our twitter account @emintsnc or the twitter hashtag #eMINTS – better yet, try adding it to your posts to share your ideas and resources!
• Join the Linkedin eMINTS Community
• Intel © Teach -  a great way to engage with other educators about practices and resources for the classroom.
• eThemes – a great way for all educators and students to find great resources. If you have an upcoming project, request a new theme to be created and let us do the work for you.

What tools do you use to share resources with other educators?

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[This post was provided by Amy Blades, an instructional specialist for the eMINTS National Center.]

Glen Westbroek, a junior high teacher from Utah’s Alpine School District, and Doug Caldwell, eMINTS Instructional Specialist, were among the presenters.  Their presentation was based around Glen’s tried-and-true way to encourage students to really think and discover how they can enhance real-world thinking through problem-solving with the use of free online tools.

The entry point for the session was the statement “When students think, they remember.” This introduction was so powerful for me because it really got me thinking about how I construct new learning.  Most of us construct learning by doing something. This might be building something with our hands, talking to peers, or just focusing on our thinking to create something new to communicate our understanding. The essential part of constructing this new knowledge is to let the learner do the majority of the work.

Doug shared with the participants, “The person doing the work, is doing the learning.”  Therefore, during this session the participants did an inquiry activity from a student’s perspective with Doug and Glen sharing facilitation strategies along the way.  This dynamic duo also shared and incorporated several free Web 2.0 tools into their unit plan such as: LiveBinder, Google’s Big Huge Labs,  Intel ® Teach Visual Ranking Tool and more.

There is something truly empowering when a presentation grabs and holds your attention for the entire session.  This experience may be exactly what educators might seek as they are working with students in 21st Century classrooms. If you are unable to attend this session on Day 2 of the conference, you can check out their unit plan at http://tinyurl.com/emintsthink.

The eMINTS Conference is a yearly event. If you didn’t get to attend this year, we hope to see you next year!

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[This post was provided by Amy Blades, an instructional specialist for the eMINTS National Center.]

Besides common web mapping services like Google Maps, one way to expose your students to geography and other geographical data online is to bring GIS software into the classroom. In fact, the Missouri Geographic Alliance, through the University of Missouri, has signed on to provide all Missouri K-12 schools and educators with access to ESRI’s GIS software called ArcGIS (and I’m confident that other states are doing the same). The first step is to request the software, and ESRI even provides a free online training course to help you get the most out of the software.

Unsure of what GIS is? As described by wikipedia, a Geographical Information System, or GIS, is “a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data”. In a nutshell, a GIS merges maps and statistical data with database technology, allowing you to view and interpret data in new ways. ESRI provides a good, easy to understand overview here. This type of software and data pairs great with inquiry and project-based learning, adding depth to assignments and simulations with geographical context and real data.

A real example of how GIS can be used in the classroom comes from Barbaree Duke, a middle school teacher in Raleigh, NC.  She had her students use GIS to create a project based on the travels of Mark Twain, using math skills to measure distances using the tools found in ERSI’s software. They then demonstrated social studies and technology skills by using the database to find locations around the world that Twain had visited. How cool is that?! For this lesson and more ideas from Barbaree, check out her GIS in Education blog.

As the above example demonstrated, GIS can be used in many different subject areas, not just social studies and geography, and can be paired with many other online tools, such as blogs, websites, and more. GIS can be used by your students to:

• visualize historical events
• explore the social and mathematical characteristics of demographic information
• study climate change
• design cities
• take inventory of geological samples
• plan ecological growth models
• catalog archaeological sites
• map travel logs/journals
• map the setting/locations of a book
• explore the locations and spread of diseases/illnesses
• create travel routes for a delivery business
• explore natural phenomena, such as volcanos and earthquakes
• explore the habitats of animals and/or humans

This is a small list of the things you can do with GIS software. What about you? In what ways could you use GIS software to spruce up a new or existing lesson?

For more information on GIS and how to use it in the classroom, Missouri educators can visit http://gis.missouri.org/. All other areas, you can check out the National Geographic Network of Alliances for Geographic Education community and click on your state to get more information.

Besides a daily question, Wonderopolis also provides students with videos, photos, and additional thought provoking questions in a “Did you know?” format. Students can practice their computer literacy skills by exploring questions that they develop based on the resources provided here. Questioning is a skill that students often struggle with, but what they may not realize is how many questions they have when they get excited about a topic.

The National Center of Family Literacy are the designers of this great resource. They have also included ideas for brain-breaks, bell-ringers, energizers, and more. These are just a few ways this resource can be integrated into the classroom on a daily or weekly basis.

Wonderopolis is a great way to exercise the brain while focusing on the world around us. What might be some daily learning exercises that can stimulate thinking or get the brain moving in your classroom?

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To find out how to share Wonderopolis right from your classroom website click here.

[This post was provided by Amy Blades, an instructional specialist for the eMINTS National Center.]

“The eMINTS conference is the best opportunity there is to find out what kinds of new and exciting things eMINTS teachers are doing in their classrooms! How often do like-minded people that share similar resources get to really think out of the box? It is a time for rejuvenation for me!!”      -Allison Byford (PD4ETS Graduate)

“I’m looking forward to seeing what’s new out there and discussing with other teachers how classrooms are changing from traditional learning to collaborative problem solving.”     - Klista Reynolds (Veteran eMINTS Teacher and PD4ETS Graduate)

“I am excited to learn about new resources that I can share with other teachers on how to better prepare when implementing Common Core State Standards that require the use of technology.  I hope I learn about new websites and tools that will help with this implementation.”  -Tysha Roughton (Veteran eMINTS Teacher)

Many education and technology conferences are expensive, running over a thousand dollars (or more!) per person — money most of us just don’t have to spare. Not only that, many take place out of state and in large cities, which can significantly add to the cost to attend. Despite this barrier, it is important that teachers, technology specialists and administrators are able to attend professional development conferences like these.  Lucky for us, there are more affordable options and one of them is right here in central Missouri.

The eMINTS Annual Conference welcomes all educators and takes place each year in Columbia, Missouri, with the 2013 conference fast approaching, running from February 27 – March 1, with registration closing soon, on January 25. For those that don’t know, the eMINTS National Center is a non-profit organization that has offered quality professional development programs for K-20 educators since 1999. They’ve reached classrooms all over the country and even have participants as far away as Australia. While it’s highly recommended to participate in the full eMINTS program for the most rewarding experience, those on a budget can get a taste of the program at the annual conference, which takes place over three days and offers various price options for those who wish to attend all (or part) of the conference.

If you are still unsure on whether to attend, you should take a look at the full conference schedule ahead of time. The eMINTS crew has some enriching sessions planned for this years conference and are welcoming two phenomenal leaders in education as keynote speakers. On Thursday, February 28, Ken Shelton brings us the keynote presentation called Generation NOW: 21st Century learning. This interactive keynote will be exploring ways that current digital resources “can foster increasing degrees of engagement from a teaching, learning, and creating perspective”. Then, on Friday March 1, the keynote speaker will be Dr. Howie DiBlasi with Building Better Teachers: Habits of Highly Effective 21st Century Classrooms, which focuses on “the most important ingredient of a great education: effective teachers”. For more information on the keynote speakers and their conference sessions, check out the full description of each session on the conference website.

In addition to the keynote speakers, the conference schedule is full of sessions for all interests, tackling various 21st century teaching topics, technology and tools. Some of the topics featured include:  Backwards Design, Collaboration, Edmodo, Inquiry, Apps, iPads, Google, Twitter, SMART Notebooks, and much more. View the full schedule online for detailed descriptions of all the sessions and workshops taking place throughout the conference.

I think that the most appealing aspect of the conference is that almost all of the speakers and participants are real eMINTS teachers who’ve seen real results. It’s an anticipated yearly event where all these great minds come together to share their wisdom and insights with those who attend. Learning is a lifelong skill and conferences like the eMINTS Annual Conference provide opportunities to expand your knowledge and further develop your skills as an educator, allowing for that exchange of information to flourish outside of individual classrooms and school districts and to reach educators all over the world. If you are interested in attending, you should act now — registration closes next Friday, January 25th.

For more information or to register for the eMINTS Annual conference, please visit the conference website or www.emints.org.

“Whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another person, helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable ; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.” stated Wiggins. This statement outlines his essentials for providing feedback, which can lead to great gains for the recipient. He centers helpful feedback around these seven key elements. This led me to reflect on how we use scoring guides in the classroom. It seems as if scoring guides are one way that teachers can guide students in setting goals and producing high quality final products. However, what might be some other ways to use feedback in the classroom?

Here are a few ideas one classroom teacher shared with Wiggins for fostering feedback…

•  Students are asked to review their finished products. Before they hand them in they must reflect on what they did that was high quality, and one thing they could do differently to increase their quality of work. Students could then implement their own suggestions; revisions, or make adjustments to their products.
• Students invite peers to provide feedback on what they did well and on what they could do better. Students could then implement their peer’s suggestions, and revise or make adjustments to their product.
• Students are asked to review their work and share a brief statement explaining the goal behind their final product to the teacher or with a peer. This checks student understanding and their individual commitment to their project.
• At the start of each class, students’ write down their goal(s) for the day. At the end of class reflect on what they did well and one thing they could have done better to meet their goal(s). Revision of the project can be performed for the next class period.
• Students self-evaluate and reflect on the week and how they did in meeting their  weekly goal(s) or objective.
• Teacher records student provided feedback and any additional efforts taken toward meeting their goals. This can be used as part of a whole group discussion to assist students in evaluating and setting future goals.

As educators we want students to self-evaluate and use peer evaluations to support educational growth. However, teaching students how to give feedback that is tangible is a tough task; this requires opportunities for students to work with and create feedback often.  As we go forth into the New Year and the second semester of the school year, what strategies might you use to foster the use of feedback in the classroom?

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You can read his full article published on ASCD here.  (Seven Keys to Effective Feedback).

• Thirteen Practical Examples of Feedback by Grant Wiggins
• On Feedback by Grant Wiggins

This post was provided by Amy Blades, an instructional specialist for the eMINTS National Center.  Thank you to Brook Higgins, an eMINTS Instructional Specialist, for sharing this resource with me.

Visit the conference website for complete conference information and online registration.

We look forward to seeing you there!
The eMINTS National Center Conference Committee