Namya Joshi, a 13-year-old, loves training teachers.
The seventh grade student has been helping teachers of her school convert their class lessons into interactive Minecraft sessions.
“Minecraft is a great platform. If a child does not like reading books, for example, you can make them in Minecraft and get the child interested,” the student from Sat Paul Mittal School in Ludhiana, says very matter-of-factly.
It all started two years ago when her mother, who is the IT Head at the school, signed up to become a global Minecraft mentor, as a part of Microsoft Innovative Educator program.
“I didn’t know much about Minecraft when I signed up. I had some exposure in our school during Microsoft’s Hour of Code but that was all I knew about it. I started researching about it and was initially shocked to see how a game could be integrated into the school’s curriculum. I wasn’t convinced,” says Monica Joshi, Namya’s mother.
A Microsoft Expert Educator herself, Joshi thought she’d learn how to use Minecraft on her own gradually, but all that changed when one day she found Namya playing with Minecraft: Education Edition, a special edition of the game customized for the classroom environment, on her laptop.
“I’d seen Minecraft installed on my mother’s Windows 10 laptop and started trying it on my own. After understanding the basics, I watched some tutorials and got myself familiar with it,” Namya says with pride.
Recovering from the initial shock, Joshi asked her daughter to create her upcoming lesson in the Minecraft world. It was a creative writing lesson and Namya had to write about her recent trip to the hills. The result convinced Joshi about using Minecraft in her school.
