The SAN Script Tuesday, April 21
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
-William James
In this fun photo, twitter user @PuzzleBethe and her husband recreated Grant Wood’s famous 1930 painting American Gothic, with a Canadian twist. The real painting is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Fun fact, although many believe the man and woman to be husband and wife, Wood explained to a fan in a letter that the woman is actually his daughter. [source]
What a fun and creative way to make the best of the cold, snowy weather much of Canada is currently experiencing. You can see Grant Wood’s original American Gothic painting below and learn more about the famous artwork here.
St. Anthony Today
EQAO planning meeting – 8:00 am
Cathleen O’Connell to read with Mrs.Rupnik’s class (AM)
11:35 – filming Univ. of Ottawa Reg and Paul
chess club
Dorothy reading with Mrs. Rupnik’s class (PM)
Table Tennis
Office Admin Day tomorrow
Three ways to use Minecraft imaginatively in the classroom
From getting students to think about careers to rebuilding their school, teachers share inventive ways they use the building-block game
Excited shouts of “left, left, left”, “knock down that tree” or “pick up that stone” can only mean one thing: your students have discovered the virtual world ofMinecraft.
Since its launch in 2011, children and adults worldwide have spent hours creating unique environments. The video game generates a blank landscape of different terrains that players explore. They construct buildings, mine for useful materials and, depending on what mode you’re in, may have to defend yourself from attacks or stave off hunger.
An education version of the game, MinecraftEdu, has now made its way into schools. In 2013, one Swedish school made the game a compulsory part of its curriculum. Now the government in Northern Ireland is providing funding for the game to be rolled out in all secondary schools by June 2015.
We took to Twitter to find out how teachers are using Minecraft. From history to languages, and coding to renewable energy, here are some fun ideas from our community.
Design your school in Minecraft
After reading about how an art gallery used Minecraft to recreate famous paintings in 3D worlds, Matthew Bell, a primary teacher at Stackpole VC school, pitched the idea of using Minecraft to his class – a mix of year 5 and 6 children.
They decided to use the game’s tools to recreate the school building. “We had only planned to work on the project during lunch times, but the children enjoyed it so much I let them continue to work for the rest of the afternoon,” Bell says.
Students needed a large area to build the school in, so they used David Whale’sAdventures in Minecraft to find Python code to make it.
They undertook this as an independent activity, working in twos or threes. They measured every part of the school to calculate how many blocks they would need for each room and had to decide whether to round up or down measurements. They also learned how to estimate for external structures.
“At the end of the session we had a class discussion about the skills that pupils felt they had learned through the activity. The children identified maths, ICT, design technology, English and geography.
“I felt that this was important. I didn’t want them to go home and say they had just been playing on Minecraft all afternoon,” says Bell.
The main pitfall of this project for Bell was the limited time. It could have run on for weeks and can be hard to fit into an already-busy schedule, he says.
more here
