Jack's Blog TEP 305

With the irony of the Minecraft movie subsiding, I want to talk about how much of a cultural phenomenon this video game really is. I started playing Minecraft when I was 12 years old in 2009 when the alpha version of the game was released, I am now 27 and still play Minecraft. Furthermore, working in a school with children who are the age that I was when I was first playing Minecraft and hearing them still talk about playing the game with their friends is genuinely mesmerizing to me. Video games often have finite life cycles, but Minecraft is different, why is that? I ask myself that question a lot, but I do think I'm sort of reaching an answer, I think what makes Minecraft so fantastic is it capability to lending itself to individual expression. It acts more like a game engine than a game if used in this way and I've recently been thinking about using Minecraft as a tool within schools. The sky is the limit for a game like Minecraft. Of course, it can be used in stem classes t...

Teaching, like many professions, requires a lot of on the job training and experience in order for one to be successful at it. One way to get this on the job training is to ask questions of your veteran colleagues, the difference between a three-year teacher and a first year teacher is immeasurable, I know that even as a paraprofessional. For class this week, we looked at a lot of tips and tricks from veteran teachers for new teachers so that they could be better prepared for their first year. One of the things that stuck out the most to me was the idea that you learn as you teach, which sounds like an oxymoron, but I think there's a lot of wisdom to that. You should own up to your mistakes, you should pay attention to the way you're teaching your lesson and see if the students are interested in what you have to say. Don't enter the classroom as a first year teacher thinking that you know everything you need to know about how to be a teacher. The biggest piece of advice tha...