Term 3, new students, and we are off!

 Today, saw a new cohort of students enter into the Minecraft(MC) class and this time there is a significant number of girls! We have a much narrower experience base than the last group but the enthusiasm far outweighs the lack of skill.

Today was a simple session where we all got to know each other and have a free “play” on Minecraft. We did this to allow us to start to plan the small group configurations based on the students abilities in Minecraft as well as their personality types. And there was plenty to observe.

We had a discussion toward the end of the class saying that though we had a play today we are in fact going to be doing some serious work, a part of which was that they will be training to become MC experts and will be teaching grade 3 students later in the term. The response to this was mixed with some looking puzzled and others were clearly excited about this and had big smiles on their faces.

One observation to share was the lack of clarity that comes with the term “Minecraft”. I know when the staff talk about MC, in their minds they are referring to the desktop/laptop computer version however when students are discussing it they are generally referring to the iOS or Xbox version. As a result when we ask the question “who has used Minecraft?” all the students say that have but when they are actually on the computers they don’t know how to engage with the software as there is no surface to “touch”. In future we will be talking about “MC on the computer” to remove any confusion.