Weekly Reflection 6: Gamfication

I really enjoyed Kara Dawson’s presentation on Minecraft Education. Minecraft was not a part of my elementary or high school experience, and the only knowledge I had of it before today was snippets I had learned from students I now work with. I underestimated how Minecraft can be used in classrooms. I knew that it was creative and students could build and problem solve but I didn’t realise educational ‘worlds’ and whole lesson plans are available. It was easy to download Minecraft Education through my UVIC email, so that I can begin to learn to play and explore the different learning aspects.

I also had a lot of fun with Scratch, which I had never used before. I spent time figuring out the features and came up with a short animation that I have below! I think both Minecraft Education and Scratch are great ways tech can be used to encourage creativty, digital literacy in a non-traditional way.