The Virtual Reality in the Classroom Initiative (VRC)
At the start of this past school year, I sent out this email to my staff to gauge interest in collaborating to create a Minecraft lesson.
I got a response from 4 teachers. Throughout the year I would check in with those teachers and have short meeting to discuss what they would like to accomplish.
By the end of the year, I had collaborated with three teachers to create content-centered, standards-driven building tasks.
Health Lesson Make a Restaurant
Obstacles that had to be overcome
- Teacher schedules are very difficult to accommodate. Between my full-time teaching schedule and their schedule, sometimes, a 4-minute meeting to talk was the best we could do.
- Minecraft Academic Value: Many teachers did not understand how the game could be Academically relevant. They only saw that students were 100% engaged when playing it and wanted to bring that engagement to their lesson.
- Minecraft Learning Curve: Teachers were eager to try it in the classroom but petrified when confronted with how to use it. Only after our meetings, with a working lesson in hand, did teachers see how they could implement a lesson without knowing how to play the game. Teachers were also set at ease with teacher-made examples of various structures.
- Technology: Though not necessary, I loaned the teachers a few extra external mice to make the building process easier and headphones with microphones so students could screen record their presentations of their builds.
- Trouble shooting; Though most lessons went smoothly my presence was requested during a few lessons. Sometimes a student had downloaded the wrong version of Minecraft and could not get it to work. Most problems were solved by restarting the machine they were working on.
What was productive
- Meeting with teachers during early release days or during their lunch period
- Making worksheets that accompanied the building tasks and having a tangible item to turn in gave a sense of importance to the lesson.