Student uses Minecraft to bring history to life.
I got a great video sent to me from a teacher and student that I really wanted to share! Here it is:
And equally inspiring was the letter from the teacher that accompanied the video:
Hello Mr. Levin,
My name is Erik Shaver and I am a social studies teacher at Achieve Virtual Education Academy in Indiana. We are the state’s first virtual public high school and I wanted to share a video with you that was inspired by your blog.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Minecraft and I play it at home in my spare time. Starting to teach in a virtual environment, I started to see how Minecraft could be used for Project Based Learning. One of my students approached me and asked if he could design his own personal city via Minecraft in lieu of writing a history for a “fake” city per my Geography and the History of the World class. I told that would be more than fine. What he produced blew me away.
Here is the Youtube link to his video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtbdYWa3gno
If you would like to share it on your blog, that would be fine with me and I’m sure it would be fine with him. For the past two weeks, he’s been agog working on this fantastic project and it fulfilled my expectiations and SO much more. Due to this project, I’m looking into ways to get some school licenses from Mojang and perhaps run an online cohort to design a group city.
I just want to say thank you for starting me down this pathway for using Minecraft as a teaching tool. As you can see, not only did my student go above and beyond the call of duty, but his finished work is amazing. He also appears in short Minecraft web videos and hosts public servers if you’d like to hop on and check it out for yourself.
From one educator to another, Thank You.
Best regards,
Erik Shaver
Social Studies Teacher
Achieve Virtual Education Academy
