Remote Learning series: Minecraft education edition

A lot of teachers around the world are transitioning to a remote learning environment due to the COVI-19 outbreak.

The eTwinz have created a series focus on remote learning where they will share five scenarios of remote learning.

Welcome to the sixth blog of this series: Minecraft Education Edition

Minecraft Education edition

Minecraft Education Edition is a game-based learning platform that builds STEM skills, unleashes creativity, and engages students in collaboration and problem-solving.

You can create a world in Minecraft for Education with all the components you want in your lesson. These lessons can go from a block of grass world where your students can build something to a world with different math equations they need to solve.

If you are not very creative in creating Minecraft worlds, you have the amazing feature of the Library of Worlds where you can find worlds (and lessons) already premade from different subjects.

How to Export our Minecraft world

Once we have created our amazing Minecraft world, we will have to distribute it to our students, and we are going to use Microsoft Teams assignments for this. To attach a world to our Microsoft Teams assignment, we will have to download the Minecraft World file to our computer.

How do we do this? We will have to open Minecraft Education Edition and go to:

My worlds>Settings>Scroll down>Export

Microsoft Teams Assignments

With Microsoft Teams Assignments you can create assignments for your students in Microsoft Teams. Manage assignment timelines, instructions, adding resources to turn in, and more.

Now that we have the Minecraft world downloaded, we are going to create a Microsoft Teams Assignment and we will attach the Minecraft World to the assignment.

Open Microsoft Teams and go to:

Assignments > Create Assignment > Add resources > Add from this device > Select the Minecraft World

This is how it looks once you have attached the Minecraft World to the assignment

With Microsoft Teams Assignments we know now how to distribute the Minecraft World to our students, but how are they going to turn their work in for us to correct it?

Flipgrid Screen Recording

With the Flipgrid Screen Recording, your students will be able to record their screen while they show and explain their work in the Minecraft World.

Our first step will be to create a Flipgrid topic where our students will record their videos.

Once we have created our Flipgrid Topic, we are going to attach it to the Microsoft Teams Assignment that we have created before. The reason why we do this is that we want to have everything in one place for our students.

Open the Microsoft Teams Assignment created before and follow these steps:

Click on Add resources > Link > Paste the link > Add a description > Click on Attach

This is how your assignment looks once you have attached the Minecraft World file and the Flipgrid link.

Add some instructions and assign the assignment to your students.

How do your students record the screen?

Go to the Flipgrid Topic and follow these steps:

Add response > Click on the three dots > Click on Screen Recording

Once you are recording your screen, go back to Minecraft Education Edition and open your world.

Explain and show your work, when you finish, upload the video to the Flipgid Topic.