How to set a Minecraft usage time for students
Hi.
We recently implemented MME in our school and it was a success, but some mothers are asking us to limit access to Minecraft because their children are playing all day, even after the requested activities are finished.
Is it possible to set a Minecraft usage time for students?
Thanks.
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Not really.
Definitely a wide topic for discussion.
Ultimately this is a home digital/screen time management issue, and it's not specifically a Minecraft problem. The way I put it: Minecraft Education Edition is like any other tool we leverage in the classroom (whether it be Minecraft, Word, Google Docs etc), and it's open to the same occasional overuse or inappropriate use as any other application. Making the tools as accessible as possible and helping students use them responsibly is my goal. When it comes down to it, I would rather students (and as it happens, my daughter), spend extra time in Minecraft potentially learning or (whether consciously or not), picking up a few new skill sets, or learning cooperating while socializing with classmates than watching two hours of mindless YouTube videos of people unboxing shoes.
As a parent I set limitations, expectations and make my daughter aware of consequences of not completing other work and over using screen time. I can't police it all the time (nor do I intend to), but I do the best I can.
That's my angle on it anyway.
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It's a great little problem to have that students are using a learning and building tool beyond what is asked or required. A community conversation is in order to determine the direction of the school, in my humble opinion.
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That makes sense to me -- but I think that the larger concerns that teachers have are important to address and fold into larger discussions about how we spend our time in school and what we expect from it.
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When I started using minecraft in my school I encourage my students to use commands . Now a day I give them a coding tasks by time they become more engaged and they use minecraft to develop them selves in computer languages like python and javascript . So Minecraft become a magic way for computer science curriculum. I think you need to develop your tasks , trying to help them to become problem solver. They need to have targets , competition between students.
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That makes sense. Healthy and natural competition in Minecraft is fun and productive. I think that part of what could be done to consider curbing "excess play time" (if that is a real thing!) is to ask students to have a single player world that is not shared. Of course, teachers would need a way to manage this setup, but oftentimes there are network solutions for seeing all the screens at once.
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Thank you for all your comments, it was very usefull.
As Dan and Bryan suggested, we had community discussions between students, parents and school to encourage the use of Minecraft with responsability and the feedback was excellent.
Nevine, we had the same idea and our department of technology is also preparing a Minecraft competition for our students. The complexity of tasks suggested by teachers increases as students develop their skills.
Once again, thank you all.
Best regards0 -
Sounds like you have some terrific forward motion, Marcello Friedemann!
Keep us posted! Maybe write a blog piece to more widely share your process. It would be instructive for others. :-)
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