Welcome to my personal blog. I’m currently researching how game mechanics can be used for learning in Singapore.
All views and information presented herein are my own and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State.
All in Lesson
As I was preparing for my adventures in Singapore early this past fall, I was contacted by the wonderful folks at Minecraft: Education Edition.
I'm very excited to announce that my summer and fall book project from 2017 has just been published.
After four months of work by 28 students and myself, we have our first world of the new school year to share.
One of the first large-scale projects I attempted with my students was to recreate the Tang Dynasty capital city of Chang'an.
After nearly 3 months and hundreds of student-hours, our collaborative project with Melvina Kurashige's students in Hawaii is finished and ready to share.
I had the distinct pleasure of sitting on a panel with three other wonderfully talented people at Minecon. Our session was titled The Building Blocks of Literacy. Enjoy!
After completing units of study on the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods, with particular emphasis on mercantilism and exploration, students worked together in groups to form trading companies, purchased supplies to outfit an expedition to the new world, and founded a colony that met six criteria.
After exploring numerous online resources, 14th century Birmingham, England and its residents were faithfully reproduced using Minecraft by my students.
In a previous post and accompanying project I described how my students, with the help of two creative colleagues, used Minecraft to visualize medieval Japanese poetry.
In a previous post I described how I intended to support student writing earlier in the school year by connecting seemingly disparate first semester content objectives by using a time traveling backstory with a steampunk twist.
I am very excited to share a new project idea I am currently exploring and readying for launch on Monday morning.
I'm fortunate this year to have an elective class called Minecraft Academy to end my day.
I've been a teacher for over 20 years and I've never experienced a more successful unit than the one I'm about to describe.
I've had a strong desire to use Minecraft for learning about medieval Japan for quite some time. I've always thought that the environments generated in Minecraft worlds often have a very Japanese familiarity to them.
I just finished a project that I would like to share. This lesson was inspired by Adam Clarke after watching his video When Stampy Came to Tea and made possible by Adam's follow-up "behind the scenes" video with creative ideas for using Minecraft to make a film.
We recently completed a project designed as a summative experience for our unit on the Middle Ages.
I recently had the opportunity to be the guest on Colin Gallagher's fabulous show, Minechat. We took a tour of my most recent published project, Chang'an.
My students and I recently completed a project with MinecraftEdu that I am especially proud of. As a culminating project for our unit on medieval China, we recreated the Tang Dynasty capital city of Chang'an.
