Graphic Organizers and Virtual Field Trips – The Uncensored Library

 This week I had the remarkable opportunity to pilot an activity I have been wanting to do with my students for a long time: a virtual field trip to the Uncensored Library. 

What is the Uncensored Library?

The Uncensored Library is the world's largest collection of globally banned literature, mostly consisting of audio recordings and articles written by journalists from heavily censored countries. Where is this library? It is in a place that can only be visited virtually: Minecraft. Reporters Without Borders built a beautiful world in Minecraft to house all this forbidden knowledge for two reasons. The first is that it cannot be destroyed; each time someone accesses the world, they are creating their own individual copy so the countries attempting to censor the material are unable to destroy or restrict every copy. The second reason is that in most of the heavily censored countries, social media is restricted, but Minecraft, being a harmless open-world video game, is not, which means that having the library exist in Minecraft allows access to those in places where the content would otherwise be inaccessible (Reporters Without Borders, n.d.). 

The Field Trip

My intention with this project is to organized a school-wide virtual field trip in October 2026 during banned book week. So far, I have created a graphic organizer that was completed by a colleague at my school with whom I will be organizing the field trip as well as by two students who volunteered to stay after school to help me. 

My students and the teacher I collaborated with are both very excited about this idea. The next step is to take our planning to the principal for his approval. Then we can begin sorting out the details of having enough devices that can run the program and organizing the actual field trip.

Below is a picture one of the completed graphic organizers from my demo-activity. A PDF of the completed graphic organizer as well as the link to the original file on Canva can be accessed at the bottom of this post under "Appendix."

References

Reporters Without Borders. (n.d.). The Uncensored Library [Multimedia]. https://www.uncensoredlibrary.com/en

Appendix

Student Example- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OFybM-1svWxmy5hS4ypsC4EUTz-9m0Nn/view?usp=sharing

Activity- https://www.canva.com/design/DAG64Dse7G4/GQwGTGzA2cx4IHoQLxg3cw/edit?utm_content=DAG64Dse7G4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton