Hi i’m sean arnold and this is another brief brave attempt in learning did you know that minecraft education edition like a lot of the other microsoft products has a bunch of built-in accessibility features to help players with disabilities access the game they’re great you can even use the Platform for teaching about real world inclusivity so let’s go ahead and get into it so you’ve likely already seen how things like multiplayer mode and the chat can help your struggling learners in addition we showed how the built-in immersive reader is an amazing tool that can be utilized but let’s review that again Npcs are able to provide information provide items or even link directly to websites and to help make it more accessible microsoft’s immersive reader is built right in you just click the little book icon it will read the text for the student you can adjust colors and fonts highlight parts of speech Translate it to another language or access picture symbols now let’s dive into the accessibility menu go ahead and hit escape or pause and you’ll get to settings then go to accessibility most of the tools in this area allow you to turn on text-to-speech or screen readers for your students who might have visual Impairments you’re also able to turn on input hints or show controls for those new to the game enable text to speech for chat toggle on now you can hear the voice reading it out for fun those aren’t the only features that might improve a struggling learner’s experience Under game settings you can adjust the difficulty scroll on down and turn on cheats make it so it’s always day so it’s easier to see and you can even go to the classroom features to go ahead and turn off any monsters or destructive items that might ruin a student’s project And if you want the student to simply explore the world without being able to break anything you can just make it an immutable world instructionally you can begin with some easy areas that will help your struggling learners get acclimated so usually where i start with students Um especially a lot of my early learners and students with more intense needs is a sort of personal narrative structure that’s a really great place to begin because they’re already beginning with stuff they know themselves and in this world i’ve created uh they can go ahead and go ahead and build for me Their perception of themselves their perception of their family perceptions of a physical structure that indicates things that are important to them hobbies uh their home uh interests and i also often have them build something that they’re worried or nervous or don’t really like or fearful Of for the year and yes that’s all a cool thing about how they indicate create all these items and are able to build it and portray it but the best part of it is is that i make it a social experience so they actually give tours of their world either through a Video or live if we’re doing a collaborative world to their peers and that’s where it becomes really intense because that’s where the students are made to express all that they are internally and there starts to build empathy for these students who aren’t always really good At that kind of thing so that’s why it’s a really great starter for a lot of my students it’s where i like to go right off the bat i know it may seem simplistic but it’s really meaningful for what our kids do and then we get into more traditional type of Narrative things that happen in minecraft yes we use it tons for math and science and construction and we build story settings too where we’ll have some of the older students build complex settings for the stories that they’re doing and then the younger students can go ahead and travel throughout it And experience it beyond that though um some of the coolest things i think we’ve been doing inside of minecraft are our accessible design and universal design for learning experiences so our students with disabilities many of them physical disabilities uh are building worlds that are accessible to other people with disabilities and we Model that within the minecraft world Direction is path to right towards home path straight towards school this particular world along with other excessively designed spaces like a school and a supermarket gives directions to visually impaired players of where to go six steps towards home entrance it allows students to experiment and determine the design They’ll need for the real world entrance welcome home but then we start to design outside of it too so that’s a nice easy space for the students to start and get the understanding of what is it like to empathize with other people who might not have the same challenges i Do who might have different ones and meet the world differently what is it like for people who can’t just walk to school right we’re not having easy access to a bus what is it like for people who can’t see how are they going to get through this world And so all these different types of things are built within those structures um ramps elevators uh voice communication systems are are really powerful we we build all these structures for a universally designed space in minecraft we can start in the minecraft and then we start building structures that are Accessible in the real world so that’s really cool that we can build off that experience students can start building some simple accessibility tools like a braille map that can be experienced physically some accessible forever patient materials that help for like students with uh motorized chairs for ramp access Um things to help students with with physical challenges more easily open up their book bags and even even more complex 3d printed materials that we get into later on often in the year granted we weren’t doing a lot of 3d printing when we were totally remote But we have been able to dive back into some of that now that we’re in a more hybrid and blended and in-person environment and beyond that now that it’s in an educational space microsoft has helped a lot in making it much more accessible yes there is the microsoft controller Xbox controller which i highly recommend super awesome super accessible you can tap in all these switches and things to it and there are a lot of other accessible controllers that we use uh if you’re interested reach out to me and i can share more on that for you But there’s also a lot of built-in accessible features for the games whether it be the special blocks or other accessibility features like text to speech or screen readers that interact with the npcs or text displays to read everything out to any visually impaired player item descriptions in the screen zoom Features that are accessible and the ability to document what’s happening within the game for students with some more cognitive challenges that’s really meaningful too i hope now you’re aware of the accessible features that exist inside of minecraft education edition as well as some of the things you can do To go ahead and make the game easy to use for your students with learning challenges thanks so much for joining me and if you found it helpful like subscribe and check out any of the other minecraft education videos here see ya Video Information
This video, titled ‘Minecraft: Education Edition (Accessibility Features)’, was uploaded by Brave In The Attempt on 2021-06-12 19:40:22. It has garnered views and [vid_likes] likes. The duration of the video is or seconds.
Not only are there several built-in accessibility features in Minecraft for users with disabilities, but it can be used to teach students …