Learning education technology as a future UVic BEd teacher
To complete my Goal 3, I finished the Speechling Phrasebook modules for basic expressions, basic questions, and basic answers. I also recorded a short video where I say 5 phrases from each module. Below is a screenshot of my completion and the video.
For this blog, I am moving into Step 4: Plan Learning Activities. Using my refined questions How can teachers integrate game-based tools into everyday practice, and how can they use game data for formative assessment?” I am planning a small learning activity that I could realistically try during a practicum or future placement.
To update you on my free inquiry project about game-based learning, I am in the process of creating a screencast that provides a quick review from a teacher’s perspective on how to use Wayground, Minecraft Education, and IXL. I chose these three game-based learning tools because they are all quite different and offer unique benefits to teachers. Here is a review of what I learned so far.
I found that Wayground is easy to set up and learn. You just click on pre-made lessons and assign homework or create a live host, similar to Kahoot, for quick assessments during lessons. I like Kahoot, but I also appreciate that Wayground provides features such as quizzes, presentations, interactive videos, passages, worksheets, and flashcards that can be assigned to students or used during lessons. They have all the subjects to choose from, which can be filtered by grade. For customization, teachers can make their own resources from their own content and add assessment tools such as quizzes. I also discovered there is a grading, reports, and data section where teachers can automatically or manually set custom grades and generate shared reports.
With Minecraft Education, I found it intimidating because I see it as a complex gaming system I am not familiar with. However, I wanted to explore something outside my comfort zone and learn more. The one thing I learned about Minecraft Education is that it’s not a quick assessment tool; teachers need to do the work by completing the Minecraft Teacher Academy to learn the essential skills for how to incorporate gameplay into any curriculum. I downloaded the game and played around without the training, and without training, I don’t understand how it works. So I learned it’s important to invest the time as a teacher and then as students to get the game started. But once the training and learning of the basics are done, I see the benefits.
I learned that IXL has a BC Curriculum tab for math, science, and English, organized by the different BC learning standards. This is important because these standards are what we use as teachers to plan instruction and assess students. Instead of always going back to the BC Curriculum website to customize lessons to the standards, teachers can save time by clicking directly on a learning standard in IXL. It then links to practice questions, examples, and sometimes videos. Students can answer questions, and if they get one wrong, the program explains the correct answer. This tool could be handy for extra practice.
Overall, with proper training, any of these game-based learning tools can be used effectively in elementary and middle school settings. Like any new technology, they can bring some fear of change and resistance at first. I noticed this in myself when I first started exploring Minecraft Education. However, once teachers have time to explore and get comfortable with these tools, that resistance usually decreases and the benefits become more apparent.
In this blog, I explore my learning about Indigenous Education and online learning, inspired by Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule’s keynote on Indigenous-centred online course design.
In an online course, students can revisit resources, explore topics in greater depth, and connect what they learn to their own lives. Dr. Jean-Paul shared how the Medicine Wheel (mind, body, spirit, emotion) can guide course design so that learning is holistic, not just intellectual (Restoule, n.d.)
One example that stood out to me was inviting students to mark a dot on a world map showing a place that is special to them. This simple activity can open the door to deeper conversations, stories, and relationships in an online space.
Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule developed the 5Rs model to help us think about why and how to integrate Indigenous pedagogies into an online classroom (Learning Design & Digital Innovation, n.d.)
The 5Rs:
I chose to focus more deeply on Responsibility.
For me, responsibility means:
As a future teacher, I plan to use the 5R as a tool to help guide my online and face to face classes.
References
Learning Design & Digital Innovation. (n.d.). The 5Rs model. The University of British Columbia. https://lddi.educ.ubc.ca/integrating-indigenous-pedagogies-into-online-learning/5rs/
Restoule, J.-P. (n.d.). Indigenous-centred online course design [Keynote video]. Department of Indigenous Education, University of Victoria. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gb_IjgCnq1PoxpU0ffGLRde3hNB7Vr_-/view
This week, I continued exploring how classroom teachers can use game-based learning in practical ways. My goal is to examine game-based learning from a teacher’s perspective: How can teachers actually use specific digital game-based tools in classrooms?
I tried to reach out to teachers by email to hear about their experiences with game-based learning, but I have not received any replies yet (my personal email may have gone to spam). However, I met with Valerie on Zoom and she shared several resources and contacts. Based on her suggestions and my own research, I decided to look more closely at three game-based tools that teachers can use: Wayground (formerly Quizizz), Minecraft Education, and IXL Math games.
For this stage of my inquiry, I explored Wayground (formerly Quizizz), a gamified learning platform where teachers can create or adapt quizzes, lessons, interactive videos, passages, and flashcards. Students can use game features such as live “gameshow-style” sessions and leaderboards similar to Kahoot.
Instead of building every game from scratch, teachers can adapt existing resources, quickly set up game-style activities, and use the built-in data (scores, responses) as formative assessment to see where students are with their learning.
I watched a brief Wayground tutorial demonstrating how to incorporate interactive lessons and presentations in the classroom. It guides users through creating a lesson, inserting various question types, and utilizing features such as student pacing and live presentation mode to make lessons engaging and game-like.
Wayground. (2025, November 7). Find free, ready-to-use resources in the Wayground library. Wayground Help Center. https://help.wayground.com/support/solutions/articles/158000403880-find-free-ready-to-use-resources-in-the-wayground-library
Minecraft Education is a game-based learning platform where students explore and build in a block-based world while working on curriculum topics such as math, science, social studies, coding, and design (Minecraft Education, 2025). Minecraft is popular among kids, so why not implement it into the classroom and let them play and learn at the same time! I want to learn more about this platform and hopefully observe or volunteer in a class that uses it in the future.
One thing I like about this platform is its teacher training. There are learning modules called Learn to Play for the basics of the game, and Lesson Crafter an AI-powered lesson generator. I love that the training is designed for all levels of comfort with technology and walks teachers through how to implement Minecraft Education in the classroom step by step.
I watched a video titled ‘How to Get Started Teaching With Minecraft Education, ‘ which guides teachers on downloading the app, signing in with a school account, and using tutorial worlds to introduce students to basic controls. It also shows how to select a curriculum-aligned lesson world and establish clear learning objectives. This helped me understand how teachers can transition from viewing Minecraft as just a fun game to using it as a structured, game-based learning tool, planned and assessed like any other lesson.
References
Minecraft Education. (2025). Resources for educators. Microsoft. https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/get-started/educators
I found many research articles on the benefits of math-focused game-based learning, which led me to explore IXL Math games. I have already looked at Wayground as a competitive group game and Minecraft Education as an individual/world-based game, so I wanted to examine a math-specific tool as well. IXL Math offers a collection of online math games and practice activities organized by grade level (K–12). Students answer questions, earn points, and receive immediate feedback. This platform can be used both in the classroom and at home to reinforce specific math skills.
In IXL, teachers can assign specific math skills to their class and then monitor progress through dashboards and reports. The live class view lets teachers see which skills students are working on in real time and how accurate they are, while skill and student reports show SmartScores, errors, and time on task. This makes IXL not only a game-based practice tool, but also a source of formative assessment data for planning next steps in instruction (IXL Learning, n.d.).
I watched short IXL teacher videos such as Assigning Skills and Skill plans in IXL and IXL Analytics, which show how to choose specific math skills, assign them to a class, and then monitor students’ SmartScores and progress in real time (IXL Learning, n.d.). These videos can be helpful for teachers to incorporate into the classroom and use as a formative assessment tool in math.
IXL Learning. (n.d.). IXL videos for teachers. IXL. Retrieved December 7, 2025, from https://www.ixl.com/resources/videos
© 2025 Island Teacher Adventures
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
