My students are enthusiastic about technology. Our student surveys indicate that their technology class is a highlight of their day! In our very small, rural school that is an hour from the nearest town, approximately 90% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch and most live in the mountains where wireless internet is not available. This makes technology at school even more fun and important. My students have had some amazing experiences this year. They have enjoyed using Microsoft Minecraft: Education Edition as a learning tool to enhance other subject area instruction. The Microsoft team asked our students to present to the State House of Representatives Committees on Education and Technology to discuss the benefits of Minecraft in Education. The Microsoft team was so impressed with our students that they invited them to tour the Microsoft Campus and featured our students in an article and video on their website. It’s been an amazing experience for our very special students.
My Project
The goal of this program is to provide students with a hands-on, collaborative component, enabling a fantastic interpersonal and team-building experience. Students can divide roles in the game design process and rotate daily in order to create the most fun video game, or one based on any subject that they or their teacher can imagine. Bloxels provides students with a unique voice, as a storytelling tool, and with an authentic audience, through an easy publishing and sharing process. Bloxels promotes hands-on building and collaboration. Using the Design Thinking process, students learn the valuable stages of design, such as empathy, ideation, and prototyping, and the platform ultimately inspires a wide range of creativity and resourcefulness.
This program will help students engage in innovative, technology-based, student-centered projects to advance skills and dispositions such as collaboration, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, and technological literacy; all of which are key components for students’ future success.
Further, through the sharing of digital content, pedagogy reflecting the shift to makerspace opportunities, and the emphasis on process-content balance in the creation of student experiences, research supports Bloxels game design as valuable addition to our technology programming. By adding new tools such as Bloxels to the classroom, I hope to create the type of environment where students are eager to learn, collaborate, and create a variety of digital projects that are rewarding and authentic.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Gearhart and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
