CEP 813 Best Work

Image courtesy of MinecraftEdu

I have to admit that this has been a difficult course for me and when asked to pick my best work, I struggled quite a bit. The more I thought about it, the more I felt my best work would have to be the assignment in which I felt I struggled the most. With that being said, I came to the conclusion that my best work is the MinecraftEdu Maze I have created. I did not choose this work because it was the greatest MinecraftEdu Maze of all time but for the reasoning that I found I was able to do something I didn’t believe I would be able to accomplish. I never thought I would be able to utilize MinecraftEdu in a way that would engage college level distance learners, not because MinecraftEdu isn’t fun, it was actually a breath of fresh air, but due to the fact that I believed they would think the assignment would be something that was silly or have any correlation to the health and religion course they were taking. The more I had engaged in MinecraftEdu, the more I learned that there is a plethora of things that my students would be able to do that would not only engage them but also help them to deepen their understanding of the material. For example, I could create an assignment in which my students have to create a maze that incorporates one of the case studies we are covering in the course. It would give them a creative outlet, allow them to have fun, and to reaffirm their understanding of the case. I believe by creating a maze themselves, they would really have to reflect on all of the things that were done correctly or incorrectly during the case. This could lead to a better understanding of how to treat patients with various cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs, which could benefit them a great deal in their careers, pending they are taking the class to learn about the proper way to treat those who believe differently than they do. There are so many lessons I can take away from this experience, first being that one should never assume they know that something will or will not be useful to their students. Secondly, it seems that the harder it is for me to complete something, the more I seem to develop an understanding about the particular thing I am struggling with. Lastly, and this may be the biggest takeaway for me, I am able to do things that I do not feel I will be able to accomplish. I never believed I would be able to complete this assignment, I never felt that I could create something useful for my students, and I felt defeated before I even started. I do not try to go into situations with a defeatist’s attitude but there are some things that seem to intimidate me more than others, most of the time they are things that ask me to hone my creativity skills. That being said, I was able to complete this assignment, I had a lot of fun doing it, and I had learned so much because of it. The way I was assessed on this assignment boosted my confidence and helped me reinforce my beliefs that I could be creative and create something that would be useful to my students, even if they are older than most students who use MinecraftEdu for learning purposes. It also helped that I was not assessed harshly but with the understanding that I had no idea how Minecraft worked before taking this course. Understanding your students understanding of the material is imperative to properly assessing them and I feel that was a huge factor in this assignment, as well as the other assignments throughout this course.