There’s a greater push to teach kids computer coding at school. But you don’t need to be a technology whiz to introduce it to your students.

My journey began in Vancouver 30 years ago, as an aid with Trainable Mentally Handicapped students. Designated as ‘uneducable,’ these students were relegated to gaining work experience. Noticing they easily recounted movie plots and the artists and lyrics Top 40 songs, it occurred to me that the real handicap might be a teaching methodology that was incompatible with their learning styles.

Robots aren’t just hobbies for students tinkering in basements or garages anymore. Many schools start robotics classes after seeing how popular the clubs are.

I wanted to design a new project that could be about classes working together, communicating, and listening to each other.

There is a growing community of educators who have adopted Minecraft as a powerful engagement tool in mainstream subjects like math, science, social studies, and even language arts.

Grammatically, it’s an awful-sounding word: gamification, or as a verb, to “gamify” the classroom. Teachers, however, have found a powerful tool here.