On Wednesday 15th March at 3.30pm that Megan Rademeyer and Angela Schaerer presented a free Microsoft Virtual Academy webinar from the Microsoft Office in Johannesburg on ‘Minecraft Education Edition’. Microsoft was originally developed in 2009 by a Swedish game designer Markus” Notch” Persson, and later fully developed and published by Mojang. It became one of the most popular games in the world. In 2014 Microsoft bought this game and launched an Education in Edition in 2016 as they saw the value of Minecraft. It was officially launched in South Africa last week, 6th March. . At the launch, Stephen Reid of Immersive Minds shared his experiences of being a games-based learning pioneer and gave powerful examples of lessons using Minecraft which students from around the world have benefitted from. If you missed out on this inspiring keynote, you can watch the recording of the Skype broadcast.

Details

Topic: Minecraft Education Edition

Date: Wednesday 15th March 2017

Time: 3pm (GMT +2)

Presenters: Megan Rademeyer and Angela Schaerer

Link to recording – click on ‘Join the event’:

Description: Minecraft is an open world game that promotes creativity, collaboration and problem solving in an immersive environment. Are you wondering how you can use Minecraft in your school? In this webinar the presenters provide an overview of Minecraft: Education Edition. They explain the difference between the original Minecraft and Minecraft Education Edition and show how it can be used very successfully in different subjects in a classroom. The teacher has more control in the Minecraft Education Edition. They will give a wealth of ideas for using Minecraft in your classroom. You’ll find out more about how to access Minecraft: Education Edition for your school and the resources for using it in your classroom. Your learners may very well already be playing Minecraft – but Minecraft: Education Edition makes it easier for teachers to develop lessons that use the game to teach subject content and develop 21st century skills. One of the interesting things they point out is that Minecraft Education Edition allows the creation of non- Player characters (NPCs). For example if the teacher wants to give specific instructions or information to the players within the Minecraft world he/she could create these NPCs to do this.  The presenters will point you to the amazing resource site https://education.minecraft.net/.

Note: This recording will be available for approximately a month after the live call. Thereafter it will become available on Microsoft Virtual Academy. The link will be added to this post once that happens.