Minecraft Celebration
Citizenship in Learning: I can design something that meets the needs of the community.
Personal Development through Learning: I can persevere through challenges; I can collaborate and work effectively with my group members.
Character in Learning: I can stay on task.
This week, we celebrated our Minecraft work. There is so much that we could say about this project. Here is a quick recap with a reflection from each group. We started by learning the difference between collaborating and cooperating. Ms Elder gave us a task where we designed new animals (like, the head of a shark, the wings of an eagle...). This was a way for us to learn and practice collaborating (making sure everyone in the group has an idea in the final product). This was a fun challenge that really taught us how to work as a team.
"This was good to help us cooperate, collaborate, and take turns." ~ Iggy
We then learned about the City of Calgary Minecraft Challenge. We attended two live sessions and got to do a Scavenger Hunt through the Minecraft Calgary world. We were impressed with Olympic Plaza and the Calgary Public Library design in the Minecraft world. Here, we also got to meet some of Calgary's leaders and learn what their goals were for this project, like Mayor Nenshi, Elder Saa'kokoto, Chief Superintendent Usih, and the head of the Calgary Public Library. We learned that they had 4 pillars that they would be looking for in their designs: a place to Connect, Gather, Work, and Play. We examined real public spaces (like Rainbow Trout playground) to see how they fit this criteria.
Ms Elder grouped us in teams of 4 based on the type of design we wanted to make. We had time to plan individually and as a team (check out the chart paper pictures below). As we started working in the world, our designs had to change. We encountered lots of tech problems, needed to persevere, and make changes as we went. In the end, each team had something to present to the class. We learned how to make a good pitch, and watched a video of kids pitching their business idea to Shark Tank (click here to watch).
Last week, we did our class vote and congratulated our class winning team: Lillian, Callie, Kimberly and Jane. Yesterday, the school voted between our class design and the design from the Grade 5/6 class.
The winning team was.... Callie, Lillian, Jane, and Kimberly!
Congrats to everyone for their hard work and creativity! Below are reflections from each group:
Iggy, Sebastian C, James, Leo
"I really loved it; it was really fun. I loved the downtown map and it took a long time to build the design because it kept disappearing. We finally got it to work and we finished it on time. We had to do a lot of persevering." ~ Seb C
"It was really fun but hard. We persevered a lot. I really liked it because my group was great; it was fun to come up with a design that could have possibly be built in real life." ~ James
"I really liked my group because for a lot of the problems, they would help me persevere through it." ~ Leo
"I think my group was good because they persevered through challenges and never gave up." ~ Iggy
Maria, Hazel, Liam, Hudson
"We changed our design because we had too much space. We put two fountains instead of one. We had to add more stuff to our first plan because the field was bigger." ~ Hazel
"We had a treehouse for staff. It was very good doing it with friends because they had great ideas!" ~ Maria
"I liked this challenge because it was fun seeing different ideas come into one big design." ~ Liam
Lawrence, Vance, Toivo, Seb K
"I think that working cooperatively is very important. You have to learn how to work together or else it will be hard in the future. I thought this was fun because I like group projects!" ~ Vance
"I liked this project because it was fun but it worked our minds to find out something to build." ~ Seb K
"I liked Minecraft because it was fun to work together to try to turn our ideas into the real world." ~ Toivo
Rochael, Sadie, Enzo, Dillon
"I really liked the Minecraft project because you were able to work with other people and add your own ideas in the build. You could also talk to your group members to see if they were ok with what you did. If they didn't, you could just change it. You didn't have to work on a whole project by yourself." ~ Rochael
"I liked how it wasn't just myself; I had group members. It was just...really fun!" ~ Sadie
"I learned that we should always give everyone a turn because you don't know what they can build in the end." ~ Dillon
Callie, Lillian, Jane, Kimberly
"I learned how to be able to accept other people's ideas and listen to other people, even if I didn't want to do something." ~ Callie
"It was very challenging and you never knew what was going to come next." ~ Lillian
"I think it was good that we did it in school because we are working together and taking turns." ~ Kimberly
"I learned how to work together in a team and how hard Minecraft is." ~ Jane
Daniel, Michael, Suzi, Oscar
The City of Calgary has told us that winners will be announced in February...Stay Tuned!
