liam | Liam O'Donnell

Teacher’s Guide: Organizing student accounts on a school Minecraft server

by liam | Apr 8, 2012 | education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, literacy, media, video games

One of the questions I get asked a lot is how do you organize your students’ accounts for your school’s Minecraft server. There are many ways to do this, but this is the way I organized my students’ Minecraft accounts. I’m sure there are more...

Teacher’s Guide to setting up a Minecraft server at your school

by liam | Mar 31, 2012 | education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, literacy, media, video games, virtual worlds

In early 2011, I set up a small multi-player Minecraft server in my school library, using school computers. In early 2012, I set up a second multi-player Minecraft server as part of our much larger Multi-School Minecraft Server Project, a single server hosting 30...

Power Play nominated for 2012 Diamond Willow Award

by liam | Mar 3, 2012 | comics, writing news

I’m wearing many hats these days: teacher, librarian, video games and learning advocate and finally humble writer. Over at my blog, feeding change, I write my education / “video games aren’t evil” posts. Here at my main page, I like to stick to...

Launching the Multi-School Minecraft Server Project

by liam | Jan 30, 2012 | education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, media, video games

As I’ve said before, Minecraft is a fantastic game for many reasons. Not least of which, is the way it sparks the imagination, creativity and inquisitiveness of all players, young and old. I’m not getting paid to blog about the game, but that hasn’t...

Warning: Using Minecraft in class could result in spontaneous, self-directed learning

by liam | Dec 3, 2011 | education, gamebasedlearning, literacy, media, video games, virtual worlds

Last year, I had the unique chance to use Minecraft with a small group of students who came to me three days a week for literacy support. It was a messy, fun three months and the kids did a lot of writing and researching outside the game, driven by their explorations...