Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Tag: minecraft

  • Minecraft, YouTube and Communication Skills

    Yesterday morning I spent some time finalizing my podcast migration to Anchor. My “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” podcast channel, which I launched in 2005, now has 481 episodes. The RSS feed I used previously, (before Anchor: Created with the Podlove Podcast Publisher) just included the most recent 50 episodes. Those 50 episodes uploaded…

  • Beware of Hacked Minecraft Software (and phishing emails)

    One of my favorite parts of our 5th and 6th grade media literacy classes each day is the start of each lesson, when we (usually) watch and discuss a variety of “Wonder Links.” I used to call these “Curiosity Links,” but changed over to “Wonder Links” this year. Basically, these are videos or articles which…

  • Quickly Convert Minecraft EE Portfolio PDFs into JPG Images

    The past two weeks I have led and taught “virtual Minecraft summer camps” for elementary and middle school students, with the help of a fantastic team of high school volunteers who have earned service hours as virtual camp counselors / moderators. I’m in the process of writing down many of my lessons learned from this…

  • Virtual Minecraft Camps for Elementary and Middle School Students: June 2020

    Update June 2, 2020: mdtech.casady.org/minecraft has updated information about both these upcoming virtual Minecraft camps for students. Five years ago, our youngest daughter (then age 11) participated in a virtual, summer Minecraft camp through “Connected Camps,” an outstanding organization based in California. She had a great experience, and we recorded a 20 minute podcast reflection…

  • Deep Work and the Race to Minecraft

    Last Thursday was the last day of our second trimester at school, and therefore the end of my second opportunity in 2019-20 to teach Digital and Media Literacy to 5th and 6th Graders. As classroom teachers, one of the things we quickly learn is how different the dynamics of separate classes can be based on…

  • Educational Technology Updates for January 2018

    Hello and Happy New Year! That may sound odd on January 27, 2018, but it’s been over a MONTH since I’ve posted to my blog in mid-December. There are a variety of reasons for this, but rest assured I’m not becoming a “blog fader.” 🙂  This may be the longest lapse in blog posts for…

  • Minecraft Halloween Challenge: Lessons Learned

    Yesterday Dr. Glen Emerson (@emerson_glen) and I, along with four other teachers and my Minecraft-guru daughter, Rachel, facilitated an evening “Minecraft Halloween Challenge” for students at our school. We had 61 students sign up and 59 participated, in two different sessions from 4 – 6 pm and 7 – 9 pm. The kids had a…

  • Opening Tinkercad 3D Designs in Minecraft

    I’m serving as a “Minecraft Consultant” to our 6th grade Social Studies teacher (Sara Zedlitz) and middle school librarian (Michaela Freeland) who are collaborating for a second year on an awesome 3D design and 3D printing project that is part of a study on ancient Rome and Roman structures. Yesterday I helped students who had designed…

  • More Minecraft Learning: Enchantments and Desert Temples

    Over our last snow day / ice day weekend I setup an older, inherited Mac laptop as a home Minecraft server and resurrected a collaborative survival world Rachel (our 7th grader) and I started a couple of years ago with our younger cousins over the Thanksgiving holidays. My own Minecraft learning curve had flattened out…

  • Student Voice, YouTube, & Digital Citizenship: Rachel Fryer on the TEDx Stage

    TEDxWallerMiddleSchool was one of only 22 TEDxYouth events hosted worldwide in 2016, and the only TEDxYouth event held to date in Oklahoma. This was the second time students and educators at Waller Middle School in Enid have hosted a TEDx event. Last year all the speakers were local, but this year a few outside speakers…