Teach Meet NZ Presentation

Teach Meet NZ for Connected Educators Month

I was asked by the lovely Sonya (@vanschaijik) to be a presenter for Teach Meet NZ in October because it is connected educators month.

I was a little apprehensive at first because I had never watched or been part of an online presentation and didn't know what to expect. I decided that I had to just jump in head first and give it a go.

What's the big deal about Minecraft?

Teach meet NZ presentation from kasseylee11

Sonya was lovely and helpful during the practice sessions and she taught me a few tips and tricks with using Google Hangout. Such as using the toolbox to add your twitter feed, how to screenshare and how to use the Q & A.

In the practice sessions my presentation was timed at 6 minutes (double the allowed time). I had to spend some time rearranging my speech to still be able to say what I wanted to say in way less words. This was great for keeping my thinking succinct.

On the day I was ridiculously nervous. I practiced my presentation at least ten times to make sure my time wasn't over three minutes. I had managed to get it down to 2:58. That right there is success!

I loved being a part of #CENZ14 and the Teach Meet NZ crew. All the educators who presented were fantastic!

As I was listening to these great educators I was tweeting out all the great content that was being presented.

TeachMeetNZ was an awesome way to network with other educators. At Ulearn I was able to meet some of the other presenters and discuss our experiences. 

Overall my experience was fantastic. I recommend it to everyone and anyone who gets the opportunity to participate in one of these, even if it is just watching the broadcast.

Transcript for my presentation:

What is the big deal about Minecraft?

It is incredibly simplistic

Appropriate for all ages

There is no goal or end, basically the game is a giant sandbox encouraging construction, creativity, exploration and survival

Minecraft is a basically an online version of Lego and it is a fantastic learning tool

So why do kids love it?

And the bigger question is why should teachers?

Minecraft covers the key competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum

Thinking – Students have to think constantly about what they are building and what their next steps are

Using Language, Symbols and Texts – Students are using rich language to discuss their projects. They are using words like mods, spawning, griefing and crafting to communicate with their peers

 Managing self – students set their own time frames alongside setting their own agenda and goals and they manage themselves to ensure they meet them

Relating to others – Teamwork and collaboration happens within the game and outside the game to support the learning

Participating and contributing – Students participate and contribute to the Minecraft community when they build amazing creations and share them with their peers

The simplistic graphics allow anything to be possible. They can build on a small scale such as building their dream classroom or on a large scale replicating an Ancient Egyptian city.

They dream it up and then they build it

 Students work together to create complex and elaborate structures. Often this will involve a planning process where a committee of students get together to develop a plan. While in the planning process students engage in rich discussion to bring their vision to life.

Minecraft experts step forward and become the leaders in the classroom

The game has built in social structures with LAN worlds and a chat function.

Players have access to Wikis, blogs, websites and message boards. They share tips and upload elaborate videos detailing the amazing things they've learned to build.

 Students are constantly reflecting on their creations.

They are willing to take risks, make mistakes, fix them and continue this forward thinking process.

It is important for students to be able to identify the learning when using Minecraft

I encourage my students to use their blogs to reflect on projects and share their designs

These are just some of the values that Minecraft can teach students

Minecraft is fun – Students don’t even realize all the values and skills they are learning. However they are engaged and contributing positively to the learning and classroom environment.

The following are all successful ways I have been able to use Minecraft in the classroom.

My most successful Minecraft project has been the recent fictional setting of Coconut Cove from the Novel Hoot. Students created maps, models and worked in teams to create a detailed replica of this city to scale using the setting description from the text.

I encourage you to allow your students to be the experts. Open the door and allow students to co-construct the path alongside you.

Minecraft and gaming is taking over the classroom. So come and join the movement!

#Ulearn14

Ulearn 2014

What an amazing conference!

It always is... but to have it in my own city just made it that much more special.

This was my third Ulearn conference and I can easily say it was the best one yet!

We were privileged enough to have our school Kapa Haka group preform on the Thursday morning to 1600+ attendees.

I was able to see and talk to ex students who were working at the conference and was even lucky enough to have one of my own students come and help our with our workshop.

I tried to summarise my experience in a tweet:

We were lucky enough to have 6 of our staff attend the three day conference. This meant when we saw something amazing we were able to discuss and reflect on how we could introduce that into our own classrooms and teams when we get back to school.

Highlights:

- Presenting on Minecraft - Sharing my passion with other educators and helping them on their journey

- Connecting, networking (Face to face and on Twitter)

- Talking and talking and talking about everything and anything with like minded educators

- Hearing the Poutama teams journey (Breakout 5)

- Steve Mouldey's creativity is not just for the arts

- Stephen Lethbridge's session on making way towards a maker culture

- Having so many of our staff attend!

- Sharing my love of Twitter with my staff & teaching them how to use it

- I won a t-shirt

Lowlights:

- Super tired now at the end of the week

- I don't have enough money to get all the amazing things I saw

- I never wanted it to end! 

Tweets from the last three days

Day One:

Day Two:

Day Three:

Goals

- To use some of the tools and models I saw during the breakouts to develop my students thinking and questioning skills

- Let my students have more choices - let them choose who to work with, how many they need in a group etc...

- I want to try use Trailblazer with my class for evidence of research in their inquiries

- Buy some robotics/electronics kits, get stuff from junk yards for student to have a maker session - get parents involved to

- Help change my staffs mindsets!

- Are our learning spaces being used effectively?

- Read the books Steve mentioned in his session 

My takeaway tips/lesson ideas/websites

-  The notion of creating problem finders

- What if statements - start engaging discussions and questioning activities 

- Creativity challenges

- Trailblazer

- New Twitter friends!

- Kahoot 

Our Minecraft Slides (Breakout 4)

Now I just need to find the time to sit down with my other staff and do our team reflection together.

This is my initial basic reflection.

As I go over my notes and resources I will continue to update this blog with how my goals are going. 

If I saw you at Ulearn or we tweeted then thank you!

Loved the connections and learning.

Hoot Server

A final video of our nearly completed Hoot server! 

Connected Educators Month - Rotorua Pass the Blog

Connected Educators Month runs for the month of October.

Each school day of October a different class will post. There is a set list of questions and small list of protocols to show our digital citizenship. The hope is to have classrooms from all across the education sector participating. 

If your are a teacher in Rotorua please sign up 

P3's Blog Post:

Estelle
Tegan
Josh

1. What school do you go to?

Mokoia Intermediate

2. What is something special about your school?

Mokoia has an amazing fitness programme that we do every morning before we start our learning. We are very privileged to be able to try out lots of different sports and represent our school at a range of events and levels. I think our fitness programme makes us stand out athletes. 

The opportunities Mokoia gives us for everything. Sport going to Aims, camp leaders, house captains, house competitions and lots of learning opportunities like Rotomaths and news team. I think our school gets along really well together because we are quite a small school.

The sports opportunities are awesome. We can try out different sports and go to lots of events. We are such a small school that all the teachers and students know us really well. Even when you do something small you get noticed for it and I like that. 

3. What is something you have enjoyed learning about this year?

I have really enjoyed speeches. It is a different type of learning from normal and I got to choose my own topic. I chose to research and talk about ivory smuggling. I discovered that the items they make from ivory were beautiful but the slaughter of elephants is a tragedy. 

I really enjoyed learning about my exploration topic. I chose to research about hostile environments. I chose Caracus, Venezuela. I liked this topic because I like researching and planning out my budget to visit there. I used IMovie to present my work and I had never used that app before. 

I liked Genius Hour. Genius hour =  we chose a topic we would do for a term. It was our passion time to create something we were interested in. I chose to make a Hunger Games P.E. game. I got to work in a group with my friends and I enjoyed all the research and effort we put into this. 

4. What do you like most about living in Rotorua?

I love that it is a small town and I know a lot of people from different schools. I like being able to go and swim at the lake and mountain bike in the forest. I am glad I don't live in a place like Auckland because it is so busy all the time and too much traffic. 

I love living on a farm. I like spring the best because we get to have pet calves and lambs. I like using my farm to train for cross country. I really like the forest as well.

Swim training with Hank. This is all I really do because I pretty much do squad training every day.

5. What do you most like doing on your computer/ipad/devices at your school to help your learning?

I like Minecraft. It is helped me with understand co-ordinates, symmetry, maths (area/volume/perimeter), visualising, explain and design new modern structures and being creative. I love using quiz up in reading time it has helped me to read faster and my general knowledge on a range of subjects.

I like Minecraft. It helps me to be design buildings and lots of other cool stuff. I also like Quiz Up because I like to challenge other people. 

I like Kodu Game Lab. I like all the programming and seeing how things work inside the programme. 

6. Is there anything else you'd like to share about yourself, your learning, your class or your school?

In our school we all work well together, we have a strong bond and that reflects in our learning because we all help and support each other. This is not something that just happens in the classroom is happens during trips, camps and out in the playground. I am proud to be a house captain and to be able to take on lots of leadership roles.

I love our class, we all have lots of fun together. We have had lots of good times in our class. My favourite subject is reading and writing. My ambition is to be triathlete and a teacher. I am excited to go and compete in AIMs games this week on Sunday for cross country and next week for the multisport. 

We have got the coolest, amazing, fun teacher. I want to be a swimmer when I am older and I want to break world records. I really like to play with a ball at break times with people in my class.