Hi Everyone!
Dr. Guthals here and I’m FINALLY feeling better! I had the stomach flu for nearly 10 days – it was horrible!
It’s been an exciting week because we have had our first San Diego Minecraft Educators Meetup and have a second scheduled for next week, so if you haven’t already – join our online Meetup (here) and if you’re in San Diego, come to our event next week where we will go over Minecraft playing, teaching, and LearnToMod (here).
Case Study – Teachers use LearnToMod to teach other subjects
I’m interested in finding out what educators, like you, want to do with Minecraft and modding in your classroom. For example, a 4th grade teacher I know (OK – she’s my mom!) teaches rock and mineral hardness with a kit and having her students scratch the rocks and take notes about what they see. This is a fun activity, but she was interested in seeing if it could possibly be done in Minecraft.
With the help of our awesome Dev Lead, Stephen, we made this mod:
The mountain in Minecraft has various minerals hidden upon it. Each student starts with a single diamond block, which could be used to demolish any other block. Students use an out-of-game sheet of paper to rank each mineral they find according to its hardness as they discover it in-game. In order to do this, students had to break the mineral blocks they found and to use those broken blocks to investigate the hardness of other blocks, and so on.
Then, students perform the same empirical investigation out-of-game, using substances they found in the classroom – like chalk, wood, glass, etc.
This kind of idea sparked some creativity in our minds – maybe teachers could use LearnToMod to build lessons inside of Minecraft and then students go through those lessons, but don’t necessarily have to code!
Now, I love teaching coding, and I think that it’s a very important skill, however I recognize that not ALL educators are interested (or have the opportunity) to teach coding. However, ALL educators can benefit from learning how to code.
Call for Participation: What lessons might LearnToMod help in integrating them into Minecraft?
So here I am, asking YOU for lesson ideas that you would like to see made into Minecraft mods. Do you teach English? Reading? Math? Physics? Science? History? Do you have a lesson that you love that could integrate Minecraft? Do you have a lesson that you hate that you want to make more appealing by adding it into Minecraft?
Send me your ideas! If you’re feeling up to it – try making it in LearnToMod first! If you aren’t ready for that yet, just send me your lesson idea and I’ll try making it in LearnToMod and work with you! Email them to me at educators@thoughtstem.com with the subject line “Case Study: SUBJECT” where SUBJECT is the subject that the lesson is a part of (e.g. Math).
Don’t forget – educators can get LearnToMod for free, you just have to email learntomod@thoughtstem.com!