When Roanoke County Public Schools gathered educators for their first training in how to teach with Minecraft: Education Edition (M:EE), “you could hear the rumble in the room,” says Jeff Terry, the district’s director of technology. That was early 2018. Today, his district is among the top ten for M:EE usage worldwide.
While Terry was surprised to hear that stat, he was also excited. He says adding M:EE to the district’s robust technology arsenal is helping students master the oft-cited Four Cs of education—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
It’s also helping students become opportunity ready in a state where business is finding it tough to fill technology-focused roles. Just last year, former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said the demand for highly skilled workers in the state far outweighed the number of qualified candidates, with “36,000 cyber jobs” needing to be filled.
Roanoke added Minecraft: Education Edition to the district’s Microsoft campus agreement as a pilot project in 2017; now the software has been rolled out to 14,000 students district-wide. Thanks to a strategic approach to PD and support, teacher collaboration has skyrocketed, kindergartners are coding and students are excited about learning.
EdSurge spoke to Jeff Terry about Roanoke’s game-based learning journey, his team’s tech implementation advice and the buzzing engagement they’ve seen in students and teachers since adopting M:EE.
Kids open up with Minecraft.
EdSurge: Why did you decide to adopt Minecraft: Education Edition?
Jeff Terry: Our goal, at the heart of our strategic framework, is for our students to be introduced to deeper learning—learning that is engaging and purposeful. We also want students to be opportunity ready when it’s time for either college or career. And to do that they need to be able to understand the Four Cs.
We have a tight relationship with the business community here and those are the skills businesses want students to have. And while Roanoke County isn’t a gigantic place by any means, it’s a suburban hub within 500 miles and a lot of areas that need technology employees.
Minecraft is one of those unique products that fits in with developing each one of those Four Cs. It even hits the fifth C we have in Virginia for citizenship.
Learning with Minecraft. Source: RCPS.
How does M:EE specifically support the Four Cs?
And the most gratifying piece is that at the end of all these lessons, kids are excited about what they’re learning.
It’s changing our students. Kids open up with Minecraft. On my school tours, I see second- and third-grade students who are not interested in giving a report or reading a book out loud. But when they build a scene from their novel using Minecraft, they are the first ones to get up in front of a projection board and present.
And they’re learning history without even knowing it. Students collaborate to construct pyramids in Minecraft as they study ancient Egypt, for example, and build historically important buildings as they research Cuba and Greece. In a Jamestown Settlement module in Minecraft, they’re building a settlement based on what the colony in Jamestown, Va. would have looked like and what things were available when the first settlers arrived.
Even our kindergarteners are coding. At every level, our students have technological abilities. But they also have people skills—they can collaborate, communicate. They’re gaining important 21st-century skills.
And the most gratifying piece is that at the end of all these lessons, kids are excited about what they’re learning. Not just excited about playing a game—excited about learning.
Student projects created with Minecraft. Source: RCPS.
Adoption and usage are extremely high in your district. How did you achieve that?
With all technology programs, the key is not to overlook the need for professional development. We made that mistake when we rolled out our 1:1 laptop program 16 years ago. Getting a laptop for every kid was one thing, but having the teachers know what that meant was another.
So for Minecraft, we started with a pilot program. We brought in our 15 Instructional Technology Resource Teachers (ITRTs)—as well as another group of high flying teachers—to have official Minecraft PD from Microsoft.
We also included our instructional supervisors in that training so they could see how Minecraft works in the classroom, how it can help them meet their standards measurements and how engaging it is. We want technology to be built into our instructional program.
When we started the official training you could hear the rumble in the room. Teachers were excited to see how many different ways they could use it and share ideas. Since that day, Minecraft has greatly increased collaboration amongst our staff.
How do you support teachers and ensure continued use?
For continued support, we use a co-teaching model with teachers. An ITRT plans a lesson that meets a teacher’s curriculum, and then the two of them implement the lesson. As the teacher becomes more confident with Minecraft, the ITRT will no longer need to always be in the classroom.
Minecraft: Education Edition also has a community of educators who submit vetted lessons. Teachers can search by subject and find lesson ideas, and new ideas are being rolled out all the time. There are also tutorials—for subjects such as chemistry and coding—so our teachers can try new things out with ease. The key really is supporting and training teachers.
And now that it’s on every one of our laptops, it’s being used by many of our students daily. About 8000 students in our middle and high school 1:1 take-home laptop program use Minecraft. And in our elementary schools, every classroom has five laptops and Minecraft is being used there as well.
It’s built into our program so deeply that it would be greatly missed if it was not here.
Back in 2014, the Danish government had the brilliant idea of recreating the whole country in Minecraft for educational purposes. But just a few weeks after the launch of the initiative, cybervandals had already raided it in the name of America.
The Danish Geodata Agency had the marvellous idea of building a virtual version of the entire country of Denmark at a 1:1 scale. One of the biggest Minecraft creations ever made, the government agency built the model based on official topographical data so people could walk around the whole country, free to even visit their own address. Four billion bricks and one terabyte of data, the whole thing was a thing of wonder.
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
The use of dynamite was banned on the Danish server to prevent the structures from being blown up, but users managed to find a workaround and discovered dynamite could be hidden in mining carts.
Cyberpirates started raiding the place, blowing apart small portions of the map and erecting US flags and “America” signs in red, white and blue.
Views of virtual Denmark after being “Americanised” by players.
“I americanlized [sic] the place a bit,” wrote one user on fan site minecraftforum.net. Another said, “Not enough ‘Murica, and did you find the oil?”
The Danish Geodata Agency repaired the damage and described the incident as part of Minecraft’s “nature of play”.
“It was the players who cleaned up the damage, replacing it with green grass and flowers the following morning,” Chris Hammeken, chief press officer at the Danish Geodata Agency, told the BBC.
Last year was the most profitable year to date for the mobile versions of “Minecraft,” according to a report from Sensor Tower.
“Minecraft” on the App Store and on the Google Play store pulled in $110 million through both purchase price of the app as well as in-app purchases. This is a 7% growth from the year prior, in which “Minecraft” for mobile generated almost $103 million in revenue.
The big spenders for “Minecraft” are US players, who generated 48% of the total revenue. This is not too surprising, considering the popularity of “Minecraft” on all platforms with young US consumers. In the first quarter of 2018 alone, Sensor Tower estimates that the mobile game generated about $30 million worldwide.
The runner up countries in spending in “Minecraft” are Great Britain (6.6% or $7.3 million in revenue) and Japan (5% or $5.5 million in revenue).
Since its release on mobile devices in 2014, “Minecraft” has grossed almost half a billion dollars worldwide, according to Sensor Tower.
The sandbox game is popular on other platforms as well, including PC and Xbox One. Last October, Microsoft pulled support for “Minecraft” for Apple TV, reasoning that it needed to reallocate resources to provide more support for platforms most popular with “Minecraft” players.
Though the game is still, clearly, going strong, it did experience its first decline in game playtime among players ages 6 to 12 in 2018, according to market research firm Interpret.
One Piece’s Thousand Sunny is one of the more iconic bits of imagery from the entire series as the Straw Hats have set sailed on many different seas on their ship. But it definitely would not be out of place sailing through space.
Kingdom Hearts III allows fans to customize special ships in the game to sail to the different Disney worlds, and one fan brought in a little One Piece love by recreating the Thousand Sunny. You can check out a video clip of it below.
Reddit user OharaLibrarianArtur shared their efforts to recreate the Thousand Sunny, and the short clip above shows it flying through space. Not only have they recreated the Jolly Roger complete with the Straw Hat’s specialized skull and crossbones emblem, but they have even recreated the specialized lion face on the front of the ship. With as many wild places the Straw Hats have gone with their ships throughout the series, it’s not hard to imagine how well it would fare in space.
Unfortunately, there’s no tutorial or part list to show how this Thousand Sunny came together in game, so fans are now left to their own devices if they want to recreate the ship themselves. Perhaps they can build the first ship, the Going Merry instead? Either way, this probably was quite a time sink of an effort. Kingdom Hearts IIIis now currently available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. You can read ComicBook.com’s spoiler-free review here.
Here’s an excerpt, “With its blend of old and new, Kingdom Hearts III feels almost immediately like a classic. While this particular franchise entry has been a long time coming, its updated mechanics and rendering means Kingdom Hearts has never looked better. In truth, this sentimental sequel manages to realize a truth set forth in the very first game: starting a new journey may not be so hard once you realize every path you’ve taken converges underneath the same sky, and all of those roads easily meet at and within Kingdom Hearts III.”
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.
Have you subscribed to ComicBook Nation, the official Podcast of ComicBook.com yet? Check it out by clicking here or listen below.
In this latest episode, we talk about the latest Star Wars rumors involving Rian Johnson, the Dragon Ball Super Broly controversy, an Alita conversation & so much more! Make sure to subscribe now and never miss an episode!
Pokemon Go‘s creators have agreed to a proposed comprehensive settlement that could remove or change a number of gyms and Poke Stops.
Back in 2016, annoyed homeowners and businesses sued Niantic after complaining about trespassing and nuisances related to Pokemon Go, which swept the entire world into a frenzy. Complaints ranged from players trespassing onto private property to capture certain Pokemon to players ignoring park hours of operations or causing damage due to high traffic volume.
The lawsuit has lingered for nearly three years, but the Hollywood Reporter has said that Niantic has agreed to a proposed settlement to resolve most of the related issues. As a result of the settlement, Niantic is proposing extensive reforms to handling complaints from property owners who don’t want Pokemon Go players on their property.
Under the proposed settlement, owners of single family homes will now have “right of removal” of any gym or Poke Stop within 40 meters of their property. In addition, Pokemon Go has agreed to respond to complaints or demands to remove a Poke Stop/gym from businesses or commercial property owners within 15 days. The game will also add a mechanism to the game to better honor the hours of operations of parks (which likely means that gyms will shut down overnight and Pokemon spawns will cease when the park is closed) and maintain a database of complaints to better manage where Pokemon spawn.
The lawsuit could potentially change Pokemon Go, which relies on public places to play the game. Although players don’t necessarily have to be adjacent to a gym or Poke Stop location to interact with it, this could lead to major changes as to where Poke Stops and gyms are placed.
The proposed settlement has not been approved by the judge of the case, nor has Niantic agreed to any payments for either the law firm involved or the named plaintiffs of the case.
Hasbro has announced that they are partnering up with Blizzard Entertainment to release a series of action figures and other toys based on the popular hero shooter Overwatch.
Nine Overwatch heroes are getting turned into figures, which will be available Spring 2019. Lucio, Sombra, Tracer, Reinhardt, Anna, Soldier 76, Pharah, Mercy and Reaper are the first heroes you’ll be able to buy and add to your toy collection. The action figures will stand 6 inches tall and will feature props and articulation, letting you pose them however you desire.
Mercy and PharahPhoto: HasbroSoldier 76 & AnnaPhoto: HasbroReinhardtPhoto: HasbroReaperPhoto: HasbroADVERTISEMENTYou can go to the next slide after 1 secondContinueLucioPhoto: HasbroSombraPhoto: HasbroTracerPhoto: Hasbro 1 / 7
Some of the figures will be sold individually for $23 each, while Pharah & Mercy and Soldier 76 & Anna will be sold in double packs that will, according to Gamestop, each cost $50.
Reinhardt is a slightly wider and more complex figure and will cost $50 by himself. Though he does come with a pretty awesome and large shield.
Hasbro also revealed they will be releasing an Overwatch themed Monopoly board game and some blasters based on Lucio’s weapons he uses in Overwatch. The blasters will cost $10 and the themed Monopoly set will cost $50.
According to Polygon, Hasbro has said all of the figures and other toys will be available at most major toy retailers nationwide.
