kids | Liam O'Donnell

Why 2015 will be like 2004 (I hope)

by liam | Dec 31, 2014 | life, writing news

It’s December 31st, 2014. That means the Year in Review lists are clogging up your newsfeeds, webpages and neural datastreams (if you’re reading this in 2025). This is another one of those. Sorry. I’ll admit that I write them mostly for myself....

My Print on Demand fail is your win

by liam | Dec 13, 2014 | Battle of the Blocks, literacy, video games, writing news

I’m not good a keeping track of stuff. My desk is a collection of piles of papers, books and gadgets that I tell myself is organized into a “system”. But it’s not. It’s just what it looks like: piles of stuff. Being this way is not a...

Seven Steps to Setting up a Minecraft Club at your School

by liam | Nov 30, 2014 | education, gamebasedlearning, Teacher's Guide, video games

[This post originally appeared on GamingEdus.org, but you missed it, didn’t you?] With October behind us and the school year in full swing here in Ontario, I finally got a chance to do something I enjoy each year: starting a new Minecraft club at school....

Tank & Fizz Advanced Reading Copy actually exists!

by liam | Sep 30, 2014 | comics, literacy, Tank & Fizz, works in progress, writing news

It seems every day I come home there’s something cool waiting for me in the mailbox. On Friday, it was this. Today, it was the awesome book pictured below: That’s right, Tank & Fizz: The Case of the Slime Stampede became a little more real today....

Minecraft, the paper clip and me

by liam | Sep 21, 2014 | education, gamebasedlearning, gaming, literacy

This was meant to be a post about using Minecraft Pocket Edition with Grade 1 students. But given the giant paper clip in the room, that post will have to wait.

Instead, I’m going to write about what the recent Microsoft purchase of Minecraft could mean for educators, students and myself. [Click the post title to read more . . . ]