I'm glad you found the link useful Jane Chien. I didn't want to hijack Mattie's post, so I'm posting a new thread. There is a list of names I could give you that use Minecraft in their classroom in a range of school subjects, but I'm not aware of teachers who are actually using it to teach specifically English as a foreign language (apart from Beth Evans who has an amazing project with refugees). That's why we are here, right? We are here to support each other with our experiences. Maybe teachers first of all, once experience Minecraft, are becoming more aware of what playing the game is like and can then see the potential of it. However, as we tend to do what we want in MC rather than what others want, unless negotiated, I often think how am I go to make every student do this in MC. But this is true for any lesson we prepare. But in school, we assume they know better and they will follow our lessons just as we desire. Something really important if you are going to use a game as a learning environment or tool is for the teacher to play and understand what game is all about. When I started my journey of learning about gaming and investigating gbl , I started by reading a lot about it. The first book I read and I highly recommend is from Gee "What video games teach us about literacy". To be honest, I didn't read the whole book, but what I read was enough for me to start wanting to learn more about how a language could be learned through games. I even used Game design as a task with my gamer students. It could have been creating a menu. But no, it was a game and they lived up to the expectation by creating 4 games to test whether a reader understood the story or not. While actually working through those game designing process with my students, I heard about Jeff's work, watched his amazing game 101 workshop online, I contacted him and he was really kind to respond. He told me that the first thing to do was "start playing". I did. Apart from Jeff (writing class - btw, Jeff Kuhn were they American students or foreign students), Irvspanish (teaches Spanish - check him out) and David Dodgson (in Turkey) who have had experience using Minecraft with their students, I don't know others for English at the moment. But 2016 was a busy year for me and I was busy researching my own students and looking for my own experiences. In English language teaching in countries that teaches English as foreign language, apparently we are tied to the traditional tools (flashcards, songs, stories, books, etc.) and somehow new tools like Minecraft are not seen as potential tool yet for teaching. Teachers in other areas have seen the potential and are already using it but I think this is a movement more in countries like England, US, Australia ( but I guess they do also find resistance and difficulties here and there too). There are teachers who see the potential, but we either bumping into the administrators not buying into it and because they prefer the safe road, or we lack the resources to design, implement and research it. :( The school I work for has a subject for informatics that could fit Minecraft in, but not to actually teach English... they are more interested in using it for Math and related areas. They are actually waiting for Microsoft to release the edu version in Brazil. and I'll surely support their effort. A dear friend who loves minecraft said something that got me thinking... "By the time teachers add to their toolbox MC, it will have lost its sparkle with the kids because the kids will have found something else." In our school, among teens I found very few students who liked Minecraft, but among students between 8-11 about 70% of them. Now, when I used it with my 6th graders I found a number of challenges. For one lack of resources, then, I used MC content to link it to the textbook content. It worked to some extend. It could have been more productive if we had the actual game at least to balance the time between planning the buildings, learning the game vocabulary, using it while in the game, show and tell presentations, etc. Minecraft is all in one: a notebook (you can actually write in books in MC, signs, etc.), an art canvas to use your creativity by building, presentation tool when combined with video recording and screencapture, discussion board when in chat or in a forum to discuss the game. I think MC is also overwhelming with so much you can do with it when comes to use it as tool for language teaching and learning. As with any tool, we choose one aspect and focus on it. As we become more proficient with that tool, we expand our knowledge of how to use it in instruction/learning. Sorry for the long post, but it amazes me how much has been said about MC in my country for instance and so far, I don't see we are moving forward in terms of using new tools in the classroom and reflecting how digital media and access to Youtube and apps have reshaped the way people actually are experiencing learning.
