Month: March 2022

Misha and Alex meet on the street to walk to school together.  It’s October and they are dressed in rain gear.  Upon arrival at school, they are assigned their caretaker roles for the day. Misha is assigned to tending to the compost and Alex is assigned to the canning shed.  They spend the next three hours in the school garden moving compost into wheelbarrows and sanitizing jars for the tomato sauce they have been making over the last three days.  As Misha aerates one pile of compost he takes in the smell of decomposing leaves, garden clippings, and food waste.  His teacher stands beside him and asks him to describe the smells and asks him to use his senses to tell him when the compost will be ready for the garden. 

As the sun gets higher in the air, the teacher calls out to the group of students that it is time to prepare lunch.  The students make their way inside the school building. After hanging raingear in the mudroom and washing their hands, they enter the garden pantry and select the items they will need to prepare today’s lunch.  Misha is excited because it is Tuesday and Tuesdays are his dad’s day to come and help the students make lunch.  Today they are making minestrone with carrots, rutabaga, celery, and kale harvested from the school garden.  Misha catches a glimpse of his dad entering the kitchen area with the other adults that come on Tuesdays. Each student greets their assigned parent or community members and lunch preparation begins.  From peeling vegetables to mixing soup base, to setting the tables everyone has an important role.

After lunch, a similar scene unfolds as each person knows what their job is for the collective cleanup and preparation for afternoon inquiry.  Misha says goodbye to his dad and joins Alex and the other Tuesday dishwashers.  As they wash up the dishes, their conversation turns to afternoon classes where they will spend the rest of the day in a bicycle workshop.  Misha and Alex walked to school as per the school’s no car policy but only because both of their bikes are in the shop and if they are successful they should be riding home from school this afternoon.

The Pros and Cons of online learning

Most of our class was dedicated to spending time learning in Minecraft but before we got into it, our class participated in an interesting group discussion about what we have learned during our experiences with online learning. We recently passed the two year anniversary marking the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic which provided many us with an opportunity to experience the pros and cons of online learning. My biggest takeaway from this discussion is how, as a community, we are so much more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for. For anyone who thought that online learning was not possible or they felt reluctant to try it, the Covid experience forced many people to adapt and hopefully realize the benefits of incorporating tech in support of learning.

Minecraft

What a buzz of excitement! It was so funny to “see” our teacher candidates in a Minecraft world. We were all logged in individually on a computer inside the same lab which made the gaming experience fun and interactive because we could hear people’s chat and reactions within the classroom.

Minecraft is a video developed Mojang studios that present players with a sort of virtual reality that feels a bit like being in lego world. You are a character that can explore many worlds and have the ability to build almost anything through it’s blocky and pixelated programming. Much like lego, the Minecraft game is very accessibile and even beginners can start building by way of putting blocks together. It is not an overly complicated design software which makes it popular among elementary aged children.

Today we explored a few different Minecraft worlds and discussed ways we might use this tool in the classroom as a way to collect evidence of learning. Minecraft even has an entire line dedidicated to educators called Minecraft Education that provides resources for teachers including lessons plans. As has been a common thread throughout this class, it appears that using Minecraft in the classroom might be an excellent way to engage learners and incorporate popular tech in the classroom to enhance learning. As a future educator, it will be important to remember the learning intentions and ensure that you are striving for those and note just using Minecraft (or other tech tools) because students like it.

Although potentially a bit dated (from 2016), I found this article titled, Minecraft Education Edition: why it’s important for every fan of the game, from the Guardian about the launch of Minecraft Education Edition which offers a newsworthy overview of the platform. This article also directed me to the self published video from Minecraft about the Education version of the game which can be viewed here:

Overall, it seems that Minecraft can be beneficial to use within the classroom. Anecdotally, the students that I have conversations with that are in grade 5 and older are telling me that Minecraft is a “kids game,” which tells me that incorporating it into future classrooms might be best suited in the middle-primary years.

This week we had a guest speaker, Tracy Humphries, the Founder, Chair and Executive Director of BCEdAccess who spoke to us about disabled students and technology.

BCEdAccess Society is an entirely volunteer-run organization serving families of students with disabilities and complex learners all over the province of British Columbia. Our parent support group has over 4000 members and stories shared on our private discussion board daily illustrate the depth of the challenges families face in pursuing equitable access to education for their children and youth in BC schools

bcedaccess.com

Tracey introduced the definition of albeism and challenged us to check our own assumptions about disabilities before meeting our future students.

Tracy focused on advocacy and she offered some concrete actions that parents and teachers can make to engage in meaningful support for students with disabilities. One message that really stood out as helpful new educators was this one from her presentation titled “where do you start?”

She shared some personal stories of advocating for her own family which really showed how important is to lean into challenging and collaborative conversations. Engaging in some of these tougher conversations is important because they can lead to small and big changes that can have a HUGE influence on a student’s learning experience. Her presentation and the group discussion that followed have encouraged me to consider making connections with the home team (families) as soon as possible so that the conversations can be more collaborative than challenging and focus on supporting the learners in the class.