I had the opportunity to teach, learn and grow. I’ve curated a few of the highlights in the Wakelet below.
I had the opportunity to work on my Masters in Game based learning and with it came a lot of game playing and experiments in Minecraft E:E. I was invited to be a #zaedu host on a TweetMeet about game based learning.
Being selected as a Microsoft In Education Fellow for the second year was an honour and with it came fun #EduDays and #MSFTEduChat TweetMeets. Being on the #Road2e2 journey of a few educators was also a privilege.
Becoming a Wakelet ambassador was a surprise and an honour.
The educator community worldwide is very supportive and I am happy to be part of this family. I hope that in 2020 our bonds can be strengthened.
Please share some of the highlights of your year in the comments with me
I just love my job and interacting with people. One of the awesome groups that I can interact with is the Nursing Education Postgraduate students. They have started a project where they incorporate game based learning #GBL to their studies. Minecraft Education Edition is the chosen platform.
Students are building a chosen system of the body in Minecraft. They will create a specific mission around it for the player to complete.
None of the students have used Minecraft EE before so it is a learning process for everyone. It is great to see how the students learn from each other. Teamwork and collaboration in action.
I am ready for Day 2 of 3 of the Red Cap advanced training. It is a deep dive into this research platform.
I’ve only used Red Cap since September 2018 and can see that the possibilities with this platform is endless. Can’t wait to share this knowledge with lecturers and students.
If you are doing research and are looking for a secure environment to collect your data Red Cap is the answer.
Zelda Laurie and Amanda Calitz created a poster presentation around their experience with game based learning and Minecraft in the classroom.
They won the poster competition at the ANEC conference hosted by the Nursing Educator Association(NEA) in South Africa. You can visit NEA’s website here.
Occupational therapy focuses on promoting health and wellness through the therapeutic use of everyday occupations. Individuals who live in rural less-resourced contexts experience unique challenges with daily tasks such as bathing, cooking and doing laundry, as amenities such as water and electricity are frequently not easily available. Occupational Therapy students are currently trained to assess the occupational needs of communities using Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques, including transect walks and community mapping. To assist the students with the preparation for their community work a rural village in Minecraft Education Edition was created. Students had time to navigate through the world and see what a rural dweller needs to go through daily to fetch water.
The game creators were challenged by the fact that a lot of the materials that they needed to build an authentic rural village with wasn’t available in Minecraft and the Resource packs needed to be edited to fill the needs of the building. For example, a roof made from sheets of corrugated iron needed to be developed.
The students immersed themselves in the game and associated with Arabang, the main character. As many students grew up in cities and are unfamiliar with the demands of rural lifestyles, it is hoped that exposure to a simulated rural Minecraft world will contribute to preparing them to deliver contextually relevant occupational therapy services.
The project lead is: Jennifer McAdam @jennife08118989 and the lead game creator is Amanda Calitz. @AmandaCalitz
The project was done at the #Wits_eZone and @eFundanathi was very supportive.
