ReturnConnecting Community and Curriculum through Minecraft Education
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Colorado Convention Center, Bluebird Ballroom Lobby, Table 1
Participate and share: Poster 
Trips and ToursPresenters
Session description
Purpose & objective
In today's classrooms, teachers are constantly looking for ways to keep students engaged in learning. This session will explore the many possibilities of Minecraft to enhance engagement, create content connections, and raise awareness of community projects and issues. We will highlight a year-long initiative where students use Minecraft Education to design and build solutions to local problems for improvement to the city. Student designs will be featured along with strategies for incorporating ongoing city-wide projects that promote sustainability, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Additionally, attendees will learn how Minecraft Education provides pre-made templates, coding opportunities, and the ability to create 3D models that can be 3D printed.
Outline
Content and activities: We will highlight student-created products from the Futuristic Minecraft: Build a Better Future Initiative launched during the 2022-2023 school year and the Imagination Unleashed Initiative for the 2023-2024 school year hosted by the CPSB Technology Training Center. We will explain how we got teachers and students involved in the challenges and share resources for using the platform. These tasks encourage students to use their innovative thinking and problem-solving abilities to create greater possibilities for the people in their community.
Time: We will spend 4-5 minutes sharing our vision for using Minecraft Education to connect curriculum to community challenges using our district website. Participants can view a video playing on repeat that shows student-created video tours of their Minecraft build.
Process: The Minecraft platform will be available for participants to explore some of the pre-made templates for them to identify ways to use it with their students. We will also display a QR code to resources.
Supporting research
Following our investigation into other school districts' use of the Minecraft Education Platform to challenge their students, we developed our own ideas that would address real-world problems affecting our community. These are a few of the websites that we used for research and information:
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/subjects/stem/minecraft-education-challenge
https://www.austinisd.org/technology/family-technology-resources/minecraft
https://sites.google.com/fayette.kyschools.us/fcpsminecraft/district-build-challenges
These are the websites that we use to promote the project.
https://www.cpsb.org/Page/37532
https://www.cpsb.org/Page/39881
Session specifications
Designer
- Use technology to create, adapt and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.
- Design authentic learning activities that align with content area standards and use digital tools and resources to maximize active, deep learning.
Knowledge Constructor
- Students curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools and methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or conclusions.