Triggered by the recent release of Minecraft Education Edition, the eLearning team are beginning to coordinate a project looking at the potential of Minecraft for the University of Brighton.
Following an initial meeting (10/10/2016) the project group have set the aim of assessing the extent to which Minecraft can solve teaching and learning issues within the university. Initially we will look at the potential for the Education Edition (which is free until Nov 1st, $5 per user after this).
The plan is to install Minecraft Edu Edition in a couple of spaces such as Watts G6 Training room and a more portable set of laptops in order to engage academics and students with the conversation (see sample resources and lesson plans).
We will also promote the free offering (get started) to staff and students via the free software pages on the IS website.
The group will investigate existing Minecraft practice with the university and also review good practice elsewhere in HE.
The project evaluation will go Blended Learning Sub Committee (BLSC) following the university processes of what is recommended for university wide support in learning and teaching.
The group also discussed Minecraft Pi and hosted Minecraft which we will consider in more detail once we have understood the potential for the free offering.
Do you use Minecraft in your teaching? Would you like to explore the potential of Minecraft for your course? If so, please leaves a comment below to make contact. Regular updates will be posted on this blog.
It’s fantastic to read the interest in Minecraft as game-based learning tool even at the University!!!
One of the first Minecraft:Education Edition worlds available for the teachers community is mine as you can see on education.minecraft.net/worlds
I was able to introduce and use Minecraft in the school here in Italy, but even in the CoderDojo community to improve collaboration between kids.
Don’t know if you already have read something about Minecraft and Tate Modern and Museum of London: they have created Minecraft worlds that let kids enjoy artworks like never before exploring imaginary worlds inspired by famous paintings and the real-life places they depict.
As you can read in these links and see on videos we were able to go beyond and let wear the artist’s role to our children.
Have a look at the video at the bottom of this link:
https://stateoftheart.creatubbles.com/2016/09/22/a-journey-into-creativity-with-creatubbles-and-minecraft/
Video on the top of this page:
https://medium.com/@marco.vigelini/real-art-within-minecraft-impossible-really-be857f5d4399
Hope this information could be useful to improve the use of Minecraft as game-based learning tool.
I sort-of do (and I sent a tweet about it when I saw your tweet). I make minecraft videos for English learning! It’s aimed more at the middle-school, elementary crowd for now, but after meeting some of the Edu people at Minecon Cali, it’s inspired me to think about how to make Minecraft and videos and a curriculum using the game as either a driving force or at least just a means to teach ESL. I’m hoping to become more involved with the Minecraft Edu sphere at least as a side if I can’t do it in my own school (In Japan. The curriculum is different and the school is small and 2-year only, so me being able to do something here would be small scale at best).
I’m now working at Canterbury Christ Church University (I’m still finishing off my PGCert at UoB). I’m trying to get a project group here together. I’ll let you know if it’s successful.
A local history group is hoping to do a digital reconstruction of 17th Century landscape. I’d like to suggest Minecraft for it because we could get members of the community involved. I used to volunteer for Brighton Museum when Blockbuilders came in to make a map for the Stone Age school workshop, which I think went down really well in the session.