The weather is getting chillier and days are getting shorter. Yep, it’s a sure sign that we’re drawing closer to winter. Let’s take a short break from the autumn weather and take a field trip to warm Brazil where Francisco Tupy, our featured educator of November 2015 resides. 

Francisco is the founder of one of the largest educational Minecraft communities out there - the Portuguese-speaking Minecraft Skool. He’s also an evangelist of using games in education and practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu in his spare time. Let’s jump right in and give the stage to Francisco! 

(editor’s note: since English isn’t Francisco’s first language we’ve made some minor changes to make it easier to grasp his meaning)

Introduction

My name is Francisco Tupy and I was born and raised in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Geography. Also, I have a Master and a Doctoral degree from ECA/USP with an emphasis on Video Games (for my Masters I studied Street Fighter and for my PhD I’m studying Minecraft).

I have been a teacher for 11 years. I taught at levels from elementary to graduate.

Today I work as an Educational Technology teacher and I am in charge of the Games Workshop at the Visconde de Porto Seguro School. Recently I went to UCSB / Krishnamurti Foundation of America (California) to study teaching and learning processes.

I’m one of the first educators in Brazil to take a evangelist position about Games and Education. These recent years I have been responsible for hundreds of Lectures and Interviews in Brazil and other countries of the world (e.g. United States, Canada, Vietnam, Peru, Colombia, India & Israel.) I won some awards, for example: Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (with the Minecraft Learning Project) and together with a student we have won honorable mention in Comkids Prix Jeunesse Ibero-American.

When I’m in my spare time I practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu, skateboarding and collect comics.

What was your relationship to Minecraft before MinecraftEdu?

I knew Minecraft through the gaming community. I play a lot of games (digital and analog), so when I saw a tweet right at the game’s release and thought: “I NEED PLAY THIS”. Every time when I have access to new game I ask to myself: “how can I use this game in my classes?”. With Minecraft it was no different, since the first time I wanted to use it as a educational material.

How do you use Minecraft or MinecraftEdu in the classroom?

Basically I use the game in two ways: as a support for game design development practices and to articulate projects related to discipline content.

Design development practices:

• a) use Creative mode to build and prototype analog games
  
• b) make collective constructions dividing duties and functions
  
• c) create agile management routines so that they can communicate, identify gaps and thus student train principles of agile management
  
• d) use the turtle block to introduce code, customizing prompts, revealing encryptions that I create to give students to solve and activities related to computational thinking.

Discipline content: 

• we can create instances of field work in the virtual world, for example, a location that will visit or any activity as archaeological dig, then prepare the world, the activities of rubric and give to the students that need to be done. Furthermore, we use all the tools, for example “how to talk in chat with other languages” or apply concepts of a sustainable home or even a contraption with robotics principles.

We focus on 21st century skills and competencies and the pedagogy of creating innovative minds.

And in addition we use other programs such as OneNote, Excel, Power Point, Sway, for example. We appropriate the interest that young people have about Minecraft and give them activities so that they can master basic concepts of technology.

How have your students responded? Do you have a specific success story?

Students are of course curious and motivated. They arrive in the classroom in a euphoric state, wanting to do and show a lot. Students contribute much to class, you can learn from them, so we propose activities where everyone can get to the final result of the way they want. The idea is that it can be offered to students of different experience levels. Such practices must first stimulate curiosity about vocational issues, technological, aesthetic and cultural.

A student project about Management processes in Collective constructions in Minecraft. Students are planning how to organize and manage the implementation of the project in Minecraft. Excel in this case is a management tool, the follow-up questions were developed by the students themselves: Task, Who performs, Status and comments. Construction plan of the castle was done in Excel. Castle was printed in 3D printer.

A video about the project:

What is the future of Minecraft in your classroom?

I believe that we still do not get anywhere near the potential that Minecraft affords and what can achieved in the classroom. Indeed the role of students is critical because MinecraftEdu allows autonomy and leadership of students and thus there is always an exchange of knowledge. Students always help and suggest approaches for optimizing the techniques employed.

In particular, I’m always thinking and planning how to create a school within the Minecraft, just like Cloud School. Where you can have an entire academic development from basic to technical training within the Minecraft, so the game can help a lot more to educate in many parts of the world (especially in hard to reach places) and revolutionize forever education as humanity really needs.

Do you have any advice for teachers starting out, or who are already working with MinecraftEdu?

MinecraftEdu is an excellent tool to be able to manage activities in Minecraft in the classroom. So the best thing a teacher has to do is: play, use, study and understand how to teach with the tools that MinecraftEdu offer. I can tell by my own experience, server management functions available expand the educational possibilities in the classroom, but to achieve this goal it is essential to know how to operate the game.

Would you like other educators to contact you about your experiences?

Yes. I´m a Minecraft evangelist, the Creeper Teacher lol.

My community is Minecraft Skool, I publish ideas on how to use Minecraft in the classroom and also share works by users and teachers around the world.

My e-mail is franciscotupy@outlook.com.

I offer myself to make virtual conferences, trainings, give lectures, speak with teachers and students about Minecraft and MinecraftEdu.

It is an honor to contribute, I believe that we all have a mission and dharma; in my life this is my mission. I am here to be able to help and can contribute.

Recently I created a server to train teachers, it is down for maintenance, but please, anyone interested should send an e-mail.