Sunday 18 March 2012

Sharing the Journey.

Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the journeys we take in our lives, and that all of the information and reflections on our decisions could be valuable to someone. The reason I am realising this is not only through my use of MinecraftEdu, but through another project I am involved in at school. Every time I meet with someone and say I want to perfect my journey before I share it, they shoot me down and try to explain the above to me. It has taken me a while but I think I finally get it.

I think that the reason I have finally understood is because I had a meeting with a couple of people regarding bringing the Edu mod into their school. One was the school technician, the other a classroom teacher. The Minecraft journey I have been on took me about 3 hours to share with them, and every lesson I have run, every decision I made, I have reflected on. Sharing those reflections alongside the lessons has great power in helping people to see the path towards bringing this type of learning into their own repertoire of teaching practice.

What was very exciting for me was sharing my passion with another teacher, and seeing that teacher 'get' how it could be used. As I was sharing my custom maps and ideas with him, he was already actively thinking about ways he could use this tool in his classes to teach students mathematics concepts. At the end of the meeting he said he was going to go home, buy Minecraft and have a play with it. (The tech has already bought MinecraftEdu for the school)

So, is my Minecraft journey complete? No. Is it perfected? Not even close. Do I know all the answers? Certainly not. There is, however, a stack of valuable information in the journey so far that could help others begin their own journey. So where to from here? I am going to keep doing what I have been doing here and on youtube, but I am also going to start sharing in other areas designed specifically for like minded teachers who are interested in pushing the current boundaries of teaching practice.

As for the other project I am involved in, I wont share that here with you guys, but I will be starting to let people see the decisions and reflections that have been made so far. So if you are a Victorian government teacher and are interested in trying to utilise the Ultranet drop me a line and I will share that journey with you.

As always thanks for taking the time to read, and feel free to comment.

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