Blog

Hi, Matthias Brendler here, transdisciplinary designer blogging what's interesting or significant relating to: Design, Education, Culture, Technology and Business (as well as anything that's really cool).

PLAY: Minecraft x Classroom: “engage students and drive new ways of thinking”

MineCraft x Social Studies

Making allows students to learn by doing and solve problems by tinkering, trial and error. Minecraft is a 3D sandbox game, which has made its way into classrooms because it engages students across a range of subjects. Imagine the learning that happens when these two popular education movements are combined.

The outcome is a powerhouse of student engagement, says Mike Washburn, head of computer science at Richmond Hill Montessori & Elementary Private School in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  In his mind, games shouldn’t be relegated to the fringes in classrooms. Educators should leverage them to engage students and drive new ways of thinking.

Source: https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail...

PLAY: “ChangeGamer”: PROMOTING GAMES TO INSPIRE UNDERSTANDING OF TODAY'S REAL + COMPLEX CHALLENGES

ChangeGamer promotes the use of computer games to study themes such as energy, climate change, natural disasters, the environment, economics, politics, history and science.  The main function of ChangeGamer is to find high-quality games, and to create student activities for each of those games.  The vast majority of games are free, browser-based, and playable on a number of different platforms (e.g. PC, Mac, Chromebook, etc.).  All of the posted activities are free and have been tested in middle and high school classrooms (Gr.7-12). We have created answer keys for a number of the student activities where applicable - if you are a teacher and require any of these email us through the contact page using your school email address. 

In addition, ChangeGamer:

    
ChangeGamer is comprised of teachers and academics who volunteer their time to further the use of computer games in subjects such as Social Studies, Geography, and Science.  ChangeGamer was founded in 2014 in Toronto, building on the experience of teachers who have been using computer games in their classrooms for up to 10 years.   

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