Well, taking the attitude mentioned in my last post into my class today worked amazingly. Explaining to the students how I felt after yesterdays class, the time and effort I put in to create this for them, as well as explaining that I showcase all of these things to the world and that this was kind of like a trial for these guys to see if they liked learning like this before I keep making these activities put them right on track. I explained that I was not going to help them with any in-game tasks, that my response would be to teleport back to spawn and re-do the tutorial. Their response was quite interesting, at first there was a bit of outrage, but once I said that all the information they required was in the game for them, if only they paid attention, they seemed to be ok with it.
I will say however it is very easy to say that I will not help, but it is an almost impossible task for me to actually follow through. I want these kids to succeed in this activity, and will do what I can to assist them to gain that success, especially if they are trying their best. So after todays lesson I am confident that the vast majority of students now know how to use the in-game tools they need to complete the upcoming tasks. Two students completed all the activities I had ready for them today, those students got free time in a Minecraft world of their choice. The rest are somewhere along the path reviewing their understanding and knowledge of perimeter.
After viewing the survey results, I asked, prior to the lesson, one of the students who was not excited to be learning in Minecraft, and did not think it would help her learn for a bit more information. From what I could gather, the reason she was not excited was basically because it was going to put her out of her comfort zone. So I asked for her feedback again today, what was great to hear is that her understanding of the game is now enough for her to begin to feel a little more comfortable, and she can see that this may help her learning if she continues. WIN!!!
So over the weekend I will complete the rest (hopefully) of the tasks that I want the students to complete in-game, check the journals that students have already submitted to the 'Central Database' and make sure the students are following along with the tasks ok. I did notice today that one student in particular had a pretty major flaw in his understanding of perimeter, one which I had not noticed from his work in class. The great thing about this is that it is an easy misconception to fix, and he will be right on track to launch his space shuttle in no time at all.
A much more positive post today, sometimes I forget that these students are not as 'experienced' as I am at this kind of learning and obviously I set my expectations too high, or did not explain them clearly enough to students To be honest, it was probably a combination of those two things, I am obviously a bit out of practice at this whole Minecraft teaching thing, especially with students that have not been in this kind of class before. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below.
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Microsoft. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Microsoft. Afficher tous les articles
mercredi 10 août 2016
Why is it Always Evolution?
So, while I have been quiet on the MinecraftEdu front, I have been working in the background, testing the latest version and bug hunting. I am very pleased to say that the new 1.7.10 version is out and can be found by hitting the update button on the launcher. It is still a development version, so there are still some bugs and issues that may arise. So get into it, 1.7 adds a whole heap of new opportunities in terms of blocks, but also in terms of, and probably more what I will be using, the new command block possibilities. I will hopefully be doing a feature update soon, as I have not done one in a long time, as well as some fresh tutorials to put on the MCEduCrew channel.
Now onto the topic for this post. Why, when I look at games, is it so easy to see how evolution could be discussed. I mean first Plague Inc, which was a great success, and now I have been watching someone play Spore on YouTube, and straight away I thought "Wow, imagine the discussions we could have as a class, or small group trying to work out what parts to put on the creatures and why." I mean Spore just lends itself perfectly to the "why" of evolution, and in a fun, and kinda cute way too. So while Plague Inc is a great discussion starter, I think that Spore might hit the mark for a better, more rounded discussion and therefore a deeper understanding.
So I got a copy of the game and started playing last night, and I messed up. The evolution of my little species sidestepped without me realising it and now I cannot go back, at least not at this stage. Which is interesting, one decision has altered the path of my species for the foreseeable future. What a powerful discussion to have with students.
My only concern with using games in this class, this year at least, is I have a totally blind student in my class, so my animal cell map, which I would normally use in the latter half of this year is not going to benefit him at all. So do I stop the others doing it to be 'fair' to him or do I try to find something that would give him the same depth of understanding while the others explore the cell? I know what I would like to do, but I am limited in my resources for giving this student a greater depth of knowledge, I am investigating designing and printing a 3D cell in slices that he could explore, but I just don't think I have the skills in design yet (or the time right now to put into learning them along the way).
This applies to Spore as well, I think with a guided discussion and verbal explanations it would work, but I am also looking into exporting 3D models from Spore to print on the 3D printer so that he can explore the parts like the other students. There are of course limitations to this method that I need to consider, he will not be able to scale the parts like the other students, he will not be able to see the environment, and other creatures that are around, unless I already have printed the scenario, which I think is impossible without actually playing the scenario first, which means I would have already done all the decision making.
So my current plan is to play a scenario as a class for a lesson (or two) and have discussions along the way as to the changes we make and why we are making them. Then break into smaller groups, of 3 or 4 students and then they play their own scenario in the groups, again documenting all the changes and reasons for them. Then as part of a final report 3D print their creatures (assuming I can get each step out along the path) and have them alongside their decision pathway with their reasoning. I may need to get them to take screenshots of some of the opposition they come up against to include in their reports to help clarify their decision making.
But first, I need to do all of this myself :D and I think I might have a fun time doing it. So keep your eyes on my YouTube channel for a feature update video, and keep you eyes here for my first attempt at a Spore evolution report with 3D printed models and screenshots to go along with it.
So back to my original question, why is it so easy to see evolution in games? Is it that the games have it in them, or perhaps because I like games, and I love evolutionary theory, it just pops out at me when I am playing games because I am passionate about that subject. Who knows, but I am definitely excited to see if I can get this up and running in the next couple of months.
As always thanks for reading, and if you have any comments please feel free to leave them below, especially if you happen to have used Spore in your classroom before, I would be very interested to hear from you.
Spore Trial.
So if you are a regular reader, you will know that once I get an idea in my head, I cannot help myself, I have to try it out. Well, true to form, I tried Spore with my Biology class last week and it was a very interesting lesson.
First off the students LOVED it. Even with just me controlling our creature and having discussions at each evolution as to what they wanted, and their reasoning as to why. In the lesson we did not get past the cell stage, but now they are at me every lesson, "Are we playing Spore today?" This of course means that I will definitely be putting in a lot of time to get my head around it, and how to support student learning both within it and outside with it as the base.
Their excitement actually started at a low level, but very quickly got to screaming level when we were getting chased by larger creatures. It was hard to maintain discussions with the whole class, and give everyone input with so few items available (and so few DNA points to spend), so I think a small group project would work much better.
I also spoke to the students who I used Plague Inc with last year, that had also played Spore on their own, for their thoughts as to which would be better. They thought that Spore would provide a more appealing learning space, and a better discussion point for evolution and why things evolve.
At the end of the lesson I spent half an hour (after school finished) discussing the lesson and my plans for the project with the blind student and his support staff as to what we could do to support him in this. He said that while the 3D printed model parts would be cool, he probably only needed the base parts printed and then written descriptions of each different part to make informed decisions and enter the discussion. We also had a chat about which group members would best support him, and describe what was happening as well as what they were doing.
I seem to be doing a lot of planning toward this project, unofficially and all in my head right now, but I am thinking, as part of the project, students must befriend or ally with at least ? other species. By doing this, students will need to think about what parts they need to do this, and this will drive their decision making and discussions into the area where most learning will occur. I don't know how many species to make them befriend, I think 2 is not enough, but I think 5 is too many, so I will need to have a serious play session in the game and figure out how much time it would take and go from there.
On the MinecraftEdu front, we are planning to do an update stream session with the developers to discuss the new features in the 1.7.10 (and before) update and also the future features that are currently being planned or worked on. So stay tuned for more information on times and how to get involved. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below.
First off the students LOVED it. Even with just me controlling our creature and having discussions at each evolution as to what they wanted, and their reasoning as to why. In the lesson we did not get past the cell stage, but now they are at me every lesson, "Are we playing Spore today?" This of course means that I will definitely be putting in a lot of time to get my head around it, and how to support student learning both within it and outside with it as the base.
Their excitement actually started at a low level, but very quickly got to screaming level when we were getting chased by larger creatures. It was hard to maintain discussions with the whole class, and give everyone input with so few items available (and so few DNA points to spend), so I think a small group project would work much better.
I also spoke to the students who I used Plague Inc with last year, that had also played Spore on their own, for their thoughts as to which would be better. They thought that Spore would provide a more appealing learning space, and a better discussion point for evolution and why things evolve.
At the end of the lesson I spent half an hour (after school finished) discussing the lesson and my plans for the project with the blind student and his support staff as to what we could do to support him in this. He said that while the 3D printed model parts would be cool, he probably only needed the base parts printed and then written descriptions of each different part to make informed decisions and enter the discussion. We also had a chat about which group members would best support him, and describe what was happening as well as what they were doing.
I seem to be doing a lot of planning toward this project, unofficially and all in my head right now, but I am thinking, as part of the project, students must befriend or ally with at least ? other species. By doing this, students will need to think about what parts they need to do this, and this will drive their decision making and discussions into the area where most learning will occur. I don't know how many species to make them befriend, I think 2 is not enough, but I think 5 is too many, so I will need to have a serious play session in the game and figure out how much time it would take and go from there.
On the MinecraftEdu front, we are planning to do an update stream session with the developers to discuss the new features in the 1.7.10 (and before) update and also the future features that are currently being planned or worked on. So stay tuned for more information on times and how to get involved. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below.
Gamifying vs. Playing Games.
I will preface this post with: This is a brain dump, it will probably jump all over, and while I will re-read and edit the post, it is just a dump of information to get things clearer in my head and ready to start thinking about how this applies to my next MinecraftEdu lesson (which I am currently planning).
This all came about because I just had a meeting with my admin, in which we were discussing games in education, what they should look like, how they should work and what they should do. This is not just digital games mind you, but any 'educational' game.
So my understanding of gamifying a classroom is that you make the learning part of the game, as is the instruction. One game I think that does this well is Historia, it is a classroom game where students play to learn, play while learning and reflect on their learning as part of the game. So how is this different to playing games in class?
Playing games in class does not necessarily integrate the learning within the game, take for example my planned Spore project, or my Plague Inc evolution lessons. These are not the same as the base for Historia, these are utilising a game to start a discussion with the class. So within the game there is no 'space' for playing to learn, playing while learning, or reflecting on their learning as PART of the game. Don't mistake my meaning, these games do teach things, innately, however I as the teacher then tie all this together through discussion into what I hope is a powerful learning experience for my students.
So what should games in school look like? My opinion is, whatever suits the learning space. However in my classroom it is more along the playing games and leveraging relevant and powerful discussions from them. However after the discussion with my admin, I am going to try to 'quest' (similar to the Measurement lesson) my upcoming MinecraftEdu lesson, which may have to become a project instead, so that students, while playing the game, learn, show their learning, reflect on their learning, and then move on to the next 'segment' of learning. This will, maybe, tie more into the gamifying category, as students will play the game to learn, learn as they are playing it and reflect on their learning within the game.
So how will it be different to my Measurement lesson? Well the newest version of MinecraftEdu has a much wider scope for 'tracking' student progress and rewarding for each step, as well as triggering the next section afterwards. Which the Measurement lesson was sort of geared towards, but the version of the software was not fully operational in this sense as the current.
So what am I planning? I have a very 'limited' plan at the moment, and I will share the whole idea once I have fleshed it out a bit, so stay tuned for that. I can tell you that it will be based on Algebra, and students will be required to learn algebra skills along the way, and utilise these skills to progress in the game. There will also be small 'rewards' along the way as students progress, as this is something I feel that was missing with the Measurement map.
As when I think about what makes me play games, why I enjoy them, it is different for different games, but the overarching reason is small rewards for progress. Whether that is levelling your character, the chance of epic loot, or unlocking certain 'hidden' parts based on progress, it is all about the rewards. So I think one of the reasons students were not overly 'driven' to complete the Measurement map, and therefore plodded along slowly may have been because they gained no 'value' by moving forward.
Ok, enough brain dumping for now, if you stuck around to here, great job, thanks for reading. If you would like to share what makes you continue to play a particular game in the comments below, please do.
This all came about because I just had a meeting with my admin, in which we were discussing games in education, what they should look like, how they should work and what they should do. This is not just digital games mind you, but any 'educational' game.
So my understanding of gamifying a classroom is that you make the learning part of the game, as is the instruction. One game I think that does this well is Historia, it is a classroom game where students play to learn, play while learning and reflect on their learning as part of the game. So how is this different to playing games in class?
Playing games in class does not necessarily integrate the learning within the game, take for example my planned Spore project, or my Plague Inc evolution lessons. These are not the same as the base for Historia, these are utilising a game to start a discussion with the class. So within the game there is no 'space' for playing to learn, playing while learning, or reflecting on their learning as PART of the game. Don't mistake my meaning, these games do teach things, innately, however I as the teacher then tie all this together through discussion into what I hope is a powerful learning experience for my students.
So what should games in school look like? My opinion is, whatever suits the learning space. However in my classroom it is more along the playing games and leveraging relevant and powerful discussions from them. However after the discussion with my admin, I am going to try to 'quest' (similar to the Measurement lesson) my upcoming MinecraftEdu lesson, which may have to become a project instead, so that students, while playing the game, learn, show their learning, reflect on their learning, and then move on to the next 'segment' of learning. This will, maybe, tie more into the gamifying category, as students will play the game to learn, learn as they are playing it and reflect on their learning within the game.
So how will it be different to my Measurement lesson? Well the newest version of MinecraftEdu has a much wider scope for 'tracking' student progress and rewarding for each step, as well as triggering the next section afterwards. Which the Measurement lesson was sort of geared towards, but the version of the software was not fully operational in this sense as the current.
So what am I planning? I have a very 'limited' plan at the moment, and I will share the whole idea once I have fleshed it out a bit, so stay tuned for that. I can tell you that it will be based on Algebra, and students will be required to learn algebra skills along the way, and utilise these skills to progress in the game. There will also be small 'rewards' along the way as students progress, as this is something I feel that was missing with the Measurement map.
As when I think about what makes me play games, why I enjoy them, it is different for different games, but the overarching reason is small rewards for progress. Whether that is levelling your character, the chance of epic loot, or unlocking certain 'hidden' parts based on progress, it is all about the rewards. So I think one of the reasons students were not overly 'driven' to complete the Measurement map, and therefore plodded along slowly may have been because they gained no 'value' by moving forward.
Ok, enough brain dumping for now, if you stuck around to here, great job, thanks for reading. If you would like to share what makes you continue to play a particular game in the comments below, please do.
A Non-Gamers Perspective.
So with all the making things engaging by investigating what makes gamers play going through my head lately, Last night I had the opportunity to have a relatively in-depth discussion with a non-gamer about a recent game they have been playing. My wife is the one that started playing Dragon Story a couple of months ago, so I started playing 'with' her. Last night we had a chat about why she had given the game up and was no longer interested in playing it, or at least why she was clearly not as interested as she was at the beginning.
Now my wife is definitely a non-gamer, she will say it is because most games require some form of hand eye coordination, but given our chat that may not be 100% true. Here is a brief summary of our chat.
What made you keep going back in the beginning?
The dragons were cute and I could collect dragons I didn't have easily.
I felt like I was getting somewhere.
What made you stop enjoying it?
The time taken for no reward, now that I have a fair few of the dragons, I wait hours for them to breed, and then hours for them to hatch, only to already have that dragon, and have to sell it for a ridiculously low value.
What is the 'end game' what am I aiming for, how does it end? I mean with Mario you get to the little flag and "insert attempted Mario flag raising music here".
The cost and time to do things that are not getting me anywhere, what is the point.
What would make you go back to playing it?
Being able to 'gift' the dragons I don't need to others, instead of having to sell them for next to nothing.
So I stewed on this a bit last night in my sleep (my best thinking happens while I sleep) and clearly she has a different 'need' from games than I do. She wants to feel a social connection, which is definitely missing in Dragon Story, I however am a collector, I want the dragons and don't really care that much about social interactions as long as I am getting new dragons.
But what really interests me the most about all of this is the initial 'hook' that made a non-gamer play. I am now also talking to other non-gamers that play these kinds of games, Candy Crush, Bubble Witch and Dragon Story to name a few. There are many of my colleagues, who will readily say that they are non-gamers, that play these games through Facebook. Are they chasing the social connection like my wife, or is that just the beginnings, and then like it did for me some point does it switch from the social, conversation starter (which is why I started Dragon Story, so I could talk to my wife about it) to the collector or achiever types playing and those wanting the social connection stop playing as they need something else to keep them coming back, which Dragon Story is missing, at least in the eyes of my wife.
So how does this apply to my upcoming project? Well it appears that there may be a 'grace' period where even those gamers (or non-gamers) who crave particular things from a game will play the game to see if it meets their needs. How long this grace period lasts I think would be dependent on how alluring the game is to the other needs that the person playing has, even if it is not their main gaming need. So given that this is a relatively short term project, I may not need to hit all the 'gamer' needs exactly from the start, but instead give a 'sniff' of them and allow students to find them on their own.
More discussions have been had since I started writing this post 3 or so hours ago, but I have written enough for now, and need to think about these conversations more before I write about them, so stay tuned for more, I feel like I am on the verge of a big shift in my teaching practice. As always thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.
Now my wife is definitely a non-gamer, she will say it is because most games require some form of hand eye coordination, but given our chat that may not be 100% true. Here is a brief summary of our chat.
What made you keep going back in the beginning?
The dragons were cute and I could collect dragons I didn't have easily.
I felt like I was getting somewhere.
What made you stop enjoying it?
The time taken for no reward, now that I have a fair few of the dragons, I wait hours for them to breed, and then hours for them to hatch, only to already have that dragon, and have to sell it for a ridiculously low value.
What is the 'end game' what am I aiming for, how does it end? I mean with Mario you get to the little flag and "insert attempted Mario flag raising music here".
The cost and time to do things that are not getting me anywhere, what is the point.
What would make you go back to playing it?
Being able to 'gift' the dragons I don't need to others, instead of having to sell them for next to nothing.
So I stewed on this a bit last night in my sleep (my best thinking happens while I sleep) and clearly she has a different 'need' from games than I do. She wants to feel a social connection, which is definitely missing in Dragon Story, I however am a collector, I want the dragons and don't really care that much about social interactions as long as I am getting new dragons.
But what really interests me the most about all of this is the initial 'hook' that made a non-gamer play. I am now also talking to other non-gamers that play these kinds of games, Candy Crush, Bubble Witch and Dragon Story to name a few. There are many of my colleagues, who will readily say that they are non-gamers, that play these games through Facebook. Are they chasing the social connection like my wife, or is that just the beginnings, and then like it did for me some point does it switch from the social, conversation starter (which is why I started Dragon Story, so I could talk to my wife about it) to the collector or achiever types playing and those wanting the social connection stop playing as they need something else to keep them coming back, which Dragon Story is missing, at least in the eyes of my wife.
So how does this apply to my upcoming project? Well it appears that there may be a 'grace' period where even those gamers (or non-gamers) who crave particular things from a game will play the game to see if it meets their needs. How long this grace period lasts I think would be dependent on how alluring the game is to the other needs that the person playing has, even if it is not their main gaming need. So given that this is a relatively short term project, I may not need to hit all the 'gamer' needs exactly from the start, but instead give a 'sniff' of them and allow students to find them on their own.
More discussions have been had since I started writing this post 3 or so hours ago, but I have written enough for now, and need to think about these conversations more before I write about them, so stay tuned for more, I feel like I am on the verge of a big shift in my teaching practice. As always thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.
On Rewards, Progress and Challenge.
In my last post I mentioned a discussion I had with a non-gaming colleague. This discussion occurred while I was writing my last post, and after she had read the 4 previous posts to that. It was a very powerful discussion for me as to what makes games engaging for her, and what makes her keep returning to a game.
There were two very interesting points, the first being the comment "I know exactly how your wife feels." So we followed that path for a while and discussed why she was thinking about abandoning Dragon Story. The main reasons were the same as my wife's. She did not see that she was making progress, or that the progress was far too slow.
This led to a discussion around her needing to see that there are 'goals' or that she is making visible progress. However she then shared another story as to why she stopped playing a different game advertised in Dragon Story. She was making heaps of progress, up to level 60 or something after only a few days and she still deleted it. The reason was that she felt there was no challenge, it was too easy. So it seems there is an interesting interplay between feeling challenged and making progress.
Her ending thoughts in this part of the discussion, after getting onto many of the other games she had discontinued playing was something along the lines of "There needs to be achievable challenge, it cannot be too easy, or impossible. I don't mind repeating something 8-10 times to 'get it' and I get a good sense of achievement when I do, however too much more repetition makes it feel like you are making no headway."
Now skip forward to Sunday evening. "I JUST GOT A DIAMOND DRAGON" rang out just before we went to bed. The real interesting part about this comment is the chat I had with my wife after it. I asked her how she felt, she said she felt pretty darn good. I then asked her if she felt this might get her back into playing the game a bit more, her response was that yes it probably would. So here is something she has been trying to achieve for a few weeks, to gain an elusive, ultra rare diamond dragon. I think one of the reasons she was becoming disengaged was because I have had a diamond dragon since very early on and we started playing together, and while I was very lucky to get one early on without even trying, she had been actually trying for quite some time.
This leads to the second interesting point from the discussion on Friday. "I don't mind some luck being involved, but it cannot be all luck, there needs to be some 'skill' involved." This is why my colleague plays Bubble Witch still, but has moved away from Candy Crush. She feels that Candy Crush is all about being lucky, especially in the 300+ levels, however Bubble Witch has some element of skill.
Now I am not sure about this, since I have also given up on Candy Crush, but I would think that there is some element of 'skill' in it, but it is so far hidden behind the 'luck of the draw' that it feels non-existent. I have not played Bubble Witch myself, but have seen others playing it, and agree that there is a much more visible element of 'skill' in the placement of your shots. This of course prompted me to ask about Angry Birds, knowing that she used to play it and did not anymore. This led back to the first point, the levels just got too hard to feel like she was getting anywhere.
When I shared the diamond dragon story with my colleague this morning, she also quite happily shared her story of 'elation' over achieving a goal over the weekend that she felt was impossible on Friday. So I know that this subject is taking up an awful lot of my blog space at the moment, but it is a very interesting perspective to take on games, gaming and gamers, one that I have never investigated before.
Now if we try to apply this to an educational perspective, not just about using MinecraftEdu in my class, or the project I initially started this investigation for, I think we get something which is probably not new or groundbreaking at all. To engage students in learning we need to have it challenging but achievable, with visible progress and some level of skill involved, it cannot be just pure chance that learning happens. So here you are, 5 or 6 posts into my discussion on an upcoming project and you are not sitting there going "Elfie, you idiot, as if you didn't already know this."
Well if that is indeed what you are thinking you would be right, of course I 'knew' this, but I have never been 'slapped in the face with it' until now. So where to from here? I still want to focus on including as much of this into the upcoming project in MinecraftEdu, with the aim of doing some real serious reflection on what components I am including, why they are there, and then hopefully what impact they have on student engagement and learning outcomes.
I am trying to think of MinecraftEdu as an instructional tool for this project, forget about the game, I never made it a 'game' in my classes early on, I always just used it as a tool to help me teach my students. This may mean a slight deviation back towards some teacher directed activities within the virtual world, I think I have been doing myself, and by consequence my students, a disservice by removing the teacher interactions.
So now you may be sitting there going, "Is it going to be fun for the students?" My response, FOR SURE!!! I am not going to ignore the information I have come across over the last few weeks about what makes games fun, for gamers and non-gamers, I still want this to be a really fun learning experience for students, I just think that if we are all having fun together it will be better for all, instead of me standing on the side trying to 'force' students to follow the path I have laid out for them.
Well that is another pretty long post, thanks for reading and feel free to leave any comments or suggestions below.
Blend Elfie, Blend!!
So, welcome to a new post. I was going to post regularly about my current project, I was even going to include you in all in the planning stages. Which means I have been procrastinating about the whole thing, including writing a blog post to update you. Which is interesting, but not interesting enough to write any more about.
So where am I with the project? I am thrashing around ideas at the moment mostly, but I came to a somewhat amazing realisation last night, hence the blog post today. So I have been trying to work out activities in game to help students understand the concepts I want to cover, and last night I asked myself a very important question. Why? Not why am I doing this project, not why do I want to use Minecraft to help my students, but why do I need an in-game activity to cover each concept?
Now this might seem silly, but I was genuinely scratching my head trying to figure out engaging, worthwhile activities that covered the concepts. However the realisation I came to is that I don't need an in-game activity for each concept. I can have out of game activities for some concepts, and offer in-game rewards for these 'real world' tasks.
So my new plan.. BLEND!!! I want in-game options and out of game options for my students to explore, I want students to be able to choose their rewards, hopefully in-game ones, but I am considering real world rewards also.
So time to share what actual planning has been done thus far. Not much, but I have 3 key activity types I want to include, ECAAS (multiple choice quiz areas), estimation station and exploration activities. So the ECAAS is pretty straight forward and I might keep this for topic review quizzes and rewards associated with that kind of review.
The estimation station activities will be about building, or perhaps purchasing items (considering it is a unit about money) and delivering them somewhere. As far as the exploration activities go, I am not entirely sure how to get this tied in, but I do want some random bonus loot areas that students can find and get rewarded for being proficient in a particular topic. With my hope being that they will find the area, go and do some learning about it and then complete the area, which means I think I will have to make it a one attempt per student system. To prevent them just random guessing until they get it correct, or repeating the task and getting too many rewards from one area, and not covering more concepts.
So what sorts of rewards am I planning? Well I am throwing the idea around of having a reward room, where particular doors open for students who have completed certain activities. These rewards I think should vary from basic survival tools/food to diamond equipment to basic building supplies to 'hard to get' building blocks and maybe even some potions. It really depends on which direction the students take. Of course the rewards could just be in-game cash for students to purchase what they want, but that means that they are going to have to 'know' how to play.
So since I know that many students in this class do not play Minecraft (hopefully they will after this project) I am thinking I can 'lead' them through the beginnings of play by choosing appropriate rewards that will encourage them to explore the survival side of Minecraft and hopefully enjoy their time in-game more because of it.
Hopefully the updates here will become more regular, I will stop procrastinating, and will share more details about my planning and building process as the next few weeks unfold. Thanks, as always, for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below.
So where am I with the project? I am thrashing around ideas at the moment mostly, but I came to a somewhat amazing realisation last night, hence the blog post today. So I have been trying to work out activities in game to help students understand the concepts I want to cover, and last night I asked myself a very important question. Why? Not why am I doing this project, not why do I want to use Minecraft to help my students, but why do I need an in-game activity to cover each concept?
Now this might seem silly, but I was genuinely scratching my head trying to figure out engaging, worthwhile activities that covered the concepts. However the realisation I came to is that I don't need an in-game activity for each concept. I can have out of game activities for some concepts, and offer in-game rewards for these 'real world' tasks.
So my new plan.. BLEND!!! I want in-game options and out of game options for my students to explore, I want students to be able to choose their rewards, hopefully in-game ones, but I am considering real world rewards also.
So time to share what actual planning has been done thus far. Not much, but I have 3 key activity types I want to include, ECAAS (multiple choice quiz areas), estimation station and exploration activities. So the ECAAS is pretty straight forward and I might keep this for topic review quizzes and rewards associated with that kind of review.
The estimation station activities will be about building, or perhaps purchasing items (considering it is a unit about money) and delivering them somewhere. As far as the exploration activities go, I am not entirely sure how to get this tied in, but I do want some random bonus loot areas that students can find and get rewarded for being proficient in a particular topic. With my hope being that they will find the area, go and do some learning about it and then complete the area, which means I think I will have to make it a one attempt per student system. To prevent them just random guessing until they get it correct, or repeating the task and getting too many rewards from one area, and not covering more concepts.
So what sorts of rewards am I planning? Well I am throwing the idea around of having a reward room, where particular doors open for students who have completed certain activities. These rewards I think should vary from basic survival tools/food to diamond equipment to basic building supplies to 'hard to get' building blocks and maybe even some potions. It really depends on which direction the students take. Of course the rewards could just be in-game cash for students to purchase what they want, but that means that they are going to have to 'know' how to play.
So since I know that many students in this class do not play Minecraft (hopefully they will after this project) I am thinking I can 'lead' them through the beginnings of play by choosing appropriate rewards that will encourage them to explore the survival side of Minecraft and hopefully enjoy their time in-game more because of it.
Hopefully the updates here will become more regular, I will stop procrastinating, and will share more details about my planning and building process as the next few weeks unfold. Thanks, as always, for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below.
20 is not much different to 40.
Who would have figured that? Having 40 kids in a Minecraft world is not really too much different to having 20, at least in terms of my energy levels getting drained. I did however have quite a few helpers with me today.
So lets talk about today. I am doing some training at a school in Adelaide. Training a group of students to become world builders (and hopefully lesson designers) today and training staff in utilising MinecraftEdu in their classes tomorrow. This afternoon was an exemplar lesson with 37 year 8 maths students doing a probability experiment that I had half pre-built and the students helped to finish off this morning while talking about effective world design, lesson design as well as using the advanced build tools.
That was 90 minutes in an untested world that was completed about an hour before by the students and me. Also with untested tech, at least untested by me, and also with an untested group of students (again by me). So here I am in a lesson with double the number of students I normally have in a class, a group of about 8 student helpers/builders and maybe 6 or so other teachers. Looking at these numbers stack up, no wonder I walked away with the feeling that it was no different, I had way more support than I perhaps had realised at the time.
So now for the good, the bad, the ugly and the to improve for next time.
The good: The actual map, in principle and practice, would be a good map to use to discuss theoretical probability, experimental probability, sample size, fairness and designing probability experiments.
The bad: We did not cover near half of what I wanted to cover effectively today.
The ugly: This is going to sound bad, but I am not being critical, I work in a school as well and understand how the funding works. The schools equipment was just not up to scratch for running Minecraft. I have the exact same laptops at my school, they are 4-5 years old, the graphics card will allow the computer to launch Minecraft, but it definitely does not give a decent framerate, which makes the game almost unplayable.
To improve for next time: This is a hard one, the map itself would be fine with the right client connections. I cannot, unfortunately, fix the underfunded schools. My delivery could probably use some tweaking, but that is always the case, especially when you listen back to the recording of your own lesson.
So what next? Tomorrow I talk to a group of interested staff about how they could leverage Minecraft in their classes, and provide them with some thinking material for how they could use MinecraftEdu in their classes, ready for them to plan for implementation next year when the school goes BYO. The other part of the day will be spent with the school technician discussing how to deploy a MinecraftEdu install to BYO devices and ensure the school is still following their licensing requirements.
Then a tour. This school is amazing, like nothing I have ever seen before. It is an agricultural school, it has heavy ties to a TAFE college as well and the grounds are not only enormous, they have their own wetlands, farms, fruit orchards and who knows what else I will find on an official tour rather than a drive around the outside. I cannot think of a school that is similar anywhere in Victoria (not that I have travelled everywhere), but wow, I am blown away by the grounds.
Also the library space we were working in today is amazingly resourced. It is at least 4-5 times the size of my library at school, it is a light, open, inviting and vibrant place. At break times students are in there playing board games, card games, reading, playing computer games and soon to be enjoying a 'maker space'.
OK enough for now, I will try to take some pictures of the amazing things I see tomorrow and will probably write another post tomorrow (or soon after) reflecting on the teacher training side of this trip. Thanks for reading, if you would like to leave a comment, please do so below
So lets talk about today. I am doing some training at a school in Adelaide. Training a group of students to become world builders (and hopefully lesson designers) today and training staff in utilising MinecraftEdu in their classes tomorrow. This afternoon was an exemplar lesson with 37 year 8 maths students doing a probability experiment that I had half pre-built and the students helped to finish off this morning while talking about effective world design, lesson design as well as using the advanced build tools.
That was 90 minutes in an untested world that was completed about an hour before by the students and me. Also with untested tech, at least untested by me, and also with an untested group of students (again by me). So here I am in a lesson with double the number of students I normally have in a class, a group of about 8 student helpers/builders and maybe 6 or so other teachers. Looking at these numbers stack up, no wonder I walked away with the feeling that it was no different, I had way more support than I perhaps had realised at the time.
So now for the good, the bad, the ugly and the to improve for next time.
The good: The actual map, in principle and practice, would be a good map to use to discuss theoretical probability, experimental probability, sample size, fairness and designing probability experiments.
The bad: We did not cover near half of what I wanted to cover effectively today.
The ugly: This is going to sound bad, but I am not being critical, I work in a school as well and understand how the funding works. The schools equipment was just not up to scratch for running Minecraft. I have the exact same laptops at my school, they are 4-5 years old, the graphics card will allow the computer to launch Minecraft, but it definitely does not give a decent framerate, which makes the game almost unplayable.
To improve for next time: This is a hard one, the map itself would be fine with the right client connections. I cannot, unfortunately, fix the underfunded schools. My delivery could probably use some tweaking, but that is always the case, especially when you listen back to the recording of your own lesson.
So what next? Tomorrow I talk to a group of interested staff about how they could leverage Minecraft in their classes, and provide them with some thinking material for how they could use MinecraftEdu in their classes, ready for them to plan for implementation next year when the school goes BYO. The other part of the day will be spent with the school technician discussing how to deploy a MinecraftEdu install to BYO devices and ensure the school is still following their licensing requirements.
Then a tour. This school is amazing, like nothing I have ever seen before. It is an agricultural school, it has heavy ties to a TAFE college as well and the grounds are not only enormous, they have their own wetlands, farms, fruit orchards and who knows what else I will find on an official tour rather than a drive around the outside. I cannot think of a school that is similar anywhere in Victoria (not that I have travelled everywhere), but wow, I am blown away by the grounds.
Also the library space we were working in today is amazingly resourced. It is at least 4-5 times the size of my library at school, it is a light, open, inviting and vibrant place. At break times students are in there playing board games, card games, reading, playing computer games and soon to be enjoying a 'maker space'.
OK enough for now, I will try to take some pictures of the amazing things I see tomorrow and will probably write another post tomorrow (or soon after) reflecting on the teacher training side of this trip. Thanks for reading, if you would like to leave a comment, please do so below
Time, My Biggest Enemy.
I am not writing this to complain, more to explain. I have all these great plans of things I could to in MinecraftEdu with my classes. What I lack is the time to implement them 'in' my classes. I can make the time outside of my classes to create the lessons, but I cannot 'make' the time in classes to use the lessons. I find this really disappointing and am struggling with a way to alleviate the issue, the constant battle between time and curriculum.
So if I have a look at what has not happened in this latter part of the year that I had planned to do. "Spore" in my senior Biology class to discuss evolution and the process by which that happens and also the Minecraft and money skills unit with my year 8 Maths class. Both projects I was extremely excited and motivated to run. However my Biology class ended 2 weeks ago, and they are now beginning to prepare for next year, starting the new course. Even if I was actually still teaching them I wouldn't be able to, in good conscience, run my planned Spore lesson anyway as the learning is about a different component of the course.
My year 8 class realistically finishes at the end of this week, and while we are covering the same content, there just was not the time available in the classes left to really delve into the learning in Minecraft, as the 'lead' time to learning is longer in Minecraft than via traditional means. The power of Minecraft comes from the long term engagement and once the 'lead' time is over the powerful learning that happens. Unfortunately I did not feel that it was in the best interests of the students understanding of the topic to begin a project that we had very little hope of finishing.
So what now? I feel like I have barely used MinecraftEdu (or much else interesting) in my classes this year. I do have one opportunity left to me that will allow me to use MinecraftEdu in a classroom. In a couple of weeks we do a transition program for years 7-9, in this program the students don't do 'formal' classes, but practice specific skills required to learn. In this program I have 90 minutes with each class of year 8, in Minecraft. So I plan on using this time to try and get students to be a more cohesive group, more likely to work together and support one another.
So I am going to give them a couple of options, option 1, creative mode with a plan to build something, be that something the school, a pirate ship, a truck… whatever. I am also considering with option 1 giving them the opportunity to work in smaller groups instead of one large group, however I would really like the whole class to become more cohesive so I would be leaning towards the small groups building parts of the whole class build instead of something completely different.
Option 2, survival mode, but with a team death count. So I will limit the total number of lives all the students have, and students that know the game will have to support those that do not and work as a team. So it will not be 1 life per student, but the class may have 10 lives, and once those lives are used up the game ends and if there is time, we can start fresh with the idea to survive, as a team, longer than previous.
Now I think option 2 is way more interesting, and probably more fun, so I am hoping the classes choose that option. I am considering just saying that is what we are doing, but choice is also very important, and voting and coming to a group consensus based on majority is probably something that is a worthwhile endeavour to set the scene at the beginning anyway.
OK, I have been sitting on this post for a couple of days wondering what else to write to close out this post, and I finally figured it out. Thanks for reading, if you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to leave them below. :D :D :D
So if I have a look at what has not happened in this latter part of the year that I had planned to do. "Spore" in my senior Biology class to discuss evolution and the process by which that happens and also the Minecraft and money skills unit with my year 8 Maths class. Both projects I was extremely excited and motivated to run. However my Biology class ended 2 weeks ago, and they are now beginning to prepare for next year, starting the new course. Even if I was actually still teaching them I wouldn't be able to, in good conscience, run my planned Spore lesson anyway as the learning is about a different component of the course.
My year 8 class realistically finishes at the end of this week, and while we are covering the same content, there just was not the time available in the classes left to really delve into the learning in Minecraft, as the 'lead' time to learning is longer in Minecraft than via traditional means. The power of Minecraft comes from the long term engagement and once the 'lead' time is over the powerful learning that happens. Unfortunately I did not feel that it was in the best interests of the students understanding of the topic to begin a project that we had very little hope of finishing.
So what now? I feel like I have barely used MinecraftEdu (or much else interesting) in my classes this year. I do have one opportunity left to me that will allow me to use MinecraftEdu in a classroom. In a couple of weeks we do a transition program for years 7-9, in this program the students don't do 'formal' classes, but practice specific skills required to learn. In this program I have 90 minutes with each class of year 8, in Minecraft. So I plan on using this time to try and get students to be a more cohesive group, more likely to work together and support one another.
So I am going to give them a couple of options, option 1, creative mode with a plan to build something, be that something the school, a pirate ship, a truck… whatever. I am also considering with option 1 giving them the opportunity to work in smaller groups instead of one large group, however I would really like the whole class to become more cohesive so I would be leaning towards the small groups building parts of the whole class build instead of something completely different.
Option 2, survival mode, but with a team death count. So I will limit the total number of lives all the students have, and students that know the game will have to support those that do not and work as a team. So it will not be 1 life per student, but the class may have 10 lives, and once those lives are used up the game ends and if there is time, we can start fresh with the idea to survive, as a team, longer than previous.
Now I think option 2 is way more interesting, and probably more fun, so I am hoping the classes choose that option. I am considering just saying that is what we are doing, but choice is also very important, and voting and coming to a group consensus based on majority is probably something that is a worthwhile endeavour to set the scene at the beginning anyway.
OK, I have been sitting on this post for a couple of days wondering what else to write to close out this post, and I finally figured it out. Thanks for reading, if you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to leave them below. :D :D :D
Surprises are Nice!
You know one of the things that makes teaching such an amazing job, and what most teachers will look forward to most (apart from holidays) are those moments where students surprise us. Those moments where students are completing the assigned activity at a much higher standard or engagement than you expect. Where they are able to show characteristics like leadership, or teamwork that they normally do not display, or even supporting other students in ways that they normally do not.
I was lucky enough to have one of these moments yesterday with a group of year 8 students. The majority of year 8 are not at school this week, either on a school camp, or choosing not to attend. There were about 10 of them here yesterday, and on Wednesday when I first had the year 8s for the week, I explained that I wanted this group to be the experts for the planned activity next week. So I gave them Wednesdays class to just play and then yesterday we stepped up the 'game' a bit.
I set up some command blocks to detect when any player died and when detected freeze all the students. I also put in a circle of border blocks to limit space and resources. I explained that this would then mean the server would be reset and everyones progress would be lost when the first player died. This meant that they were a team and they needed to work together to survive. Their first attempt was as you would expect, 'little' teams all worked on their own, building their own shelter for the first night. Surprisingly they all survived the first night, but a creeper did what creepers do and snuck up on one of the students and blew them to the afterlife….
Server reset to a new random map after a quick discussion about how effective teams operate. Attempt 2 had all the students in the one 'team' building the same house, it was ginormous, more like a house for 30 people. This time students worked much better, to the point where they were supporting one student who had run out of hunger by going out to get him some food. Again they survived the first night, but a skeleton in the water and students lack of hunger caused the server to reset again.
Attempt number 3 ended in the first night, a student got caught in a cave with a skeleton and died early in the first night. This time however the students made a much more modest house and again, their teamwork and planning was much improved. Food was sought and shared amongst the team, as was the gathering of wood and other resources. Unfortunately many students were relying on the knowledge of others in terms of building tools and other crafted items.
Attempt number 4 is where fantastic things started happening, after a quick discussion about what had happened, and how to prevent it, I restarted the server again to a new random world, and this time set the difficulty to hard, to make food a higher priority. Again the teamwork and planning was excellent, however it was during this run (which is going to continue today) that the sharing of knowledge began. One 'non-crafting' student called out to one of those that knew the recipes, "I need a pickaxe". A third student then said to the first, "You cannot rely on him all the time". Now this third student is probably where the title of this post, and the feelings associated with it come from. This student is normally one who will sit back and let others do the work for them, and yet here he was, in this team situation trying to get others to do their own work.
It was after this comment that this same student began asking others for the recipes to create things, instead of just taking those that were given to him. I think he had realised that being part of a team means that all members of the team need to support each other, and when this other student called out his need, he realised that perhaps only having one or two students with the knowledge of tool crafting was not the most efficient in this situation. This was a nice surprise, and gives me a great deal of hope for next week when I run this with a lot more students with the goal of encouraging teamwork and a less fractured, more cohesive class group.
So on that note, I have decided to just run with this activity, I know I felt that the decision was a worthwhile addition to the beginning of the lesson, but seeing what I have this week, I think it is far more beneficial to complete this activity, and the learning and teamwork that comes out of it will be far greater than a collaborative build with no consequences for a lack of team work. So now I need to work out the right balance of space restriction and life restriction for a whole class instead of a small group.
I am still leaning towards 5 lives for the class, and I think an initial space of a radius 100 blocks that doubles on the dawn of the 3rd day. Given this small group I am currently working with is unable to survive past the second day I think it is a good target and I wish I had more than just 90 minutes to run this program with the students as I think 90 minutes will only scratch the surface of the possible outcomes for this activity.
This brings to mind the video Shane and I produced a while ago, talking about the problem solving process while playing Crash Landings. The goal of that 'series' (we have 2 recorded iterations currently, but more planned) is to discuss the potential for teaching the design process and problem solving processes. Having done this activity I really think there is massive potential for that sort of teaching within this space, be it in modded Minecraft like Crash Landings, or vanilla Minecraft with specific restrictions.
Thanks for reading and as always, feel free to leave a comment below.
I was lucky enough to have one of these moments yesterday with a group of year 8 students. The majority of year 8 are not at school this week, either on a school camp, or choosing not to attend. There were about 10 of them here yesterday, and on Wednesday when I first had the year 8s for the week, I explained that I wanted this group to be the experts for the planned activity next week. So I gave them Wednesdays class to just play and then yesterday we stepped up the 'game' a bit.
I set up some command blocks to detect when any player died and when detected freeze all the students. I also put in a circle of border blocks to limit space and resources. I explained that this would then mean the server would be reset and everyones progress would be lost when the first player died. This meant that they were a team and they needed to work together to survive. Their first attempt was as you would expect, 'little' teams all worked on their own, building their own shelter for the first night. Surprisingly they all survived the first night, but a creeper did what creepers do and snuck up on one of the students and blew them to the afterlife….
Server reset to a new random map after a quick discussion about how effective teams operate. Attempt 2 had all the students in the one 'team' building the same house, it was ginormous, more like a house for 30 people. This time students worked much better, to the point where they were supporting one student who had run out of hunger by going out to get him some food. Again they survived the first night, but a skeleton in the water and students lack of hunger caused the server to reset again.
Attempt number 3 ended in the first night, a student got caught in a cave with a skeleton and died early in the first night. This time however the students made a much more modest house and again, their teamwork and planning was much improved. Food was sought and shared amongst the team, as was the gathering of wood and other resources. Unfortunately many students were relying on the knowledge of others in terms of building tools and other crafted items.
Attempt number 4 is where fantastic things started happening, after a quick discussion about what had happened, and how to prevent it, I restarted the server again to a new random world, and this time set the difficulty to hard, to make food a higher priority. Again the teamwork and planning was excellent, however it was during this run (which is going to continue today) that the sharing of knowledge began. One 'non-crafting' student called out to one of those that knew the recipes, "I need a pickaxe". A third student then said to the first, "You cannot rely on him all the time". Now this third student is probably where the title of this post, and the feelings associated with it come from. This student is normally one who will sit back and let others do the work for them, and yet here he was, in this team situation trying to get others to do their own work.
It was after this comment that this same student began asking others for the recipes to create things, instead of just taking those that were given to him. I think he had realised that being part of a team means that all members of the team need to support each other, and when this other student called out his need, he realised that perhaps only having one or two students with the knowledge of tool crafting was not the most efficient in this situation. This was a nice surprise, and gives me a great deal of hope for next week when I run this with a lot more students with the goal of encouraging teamwork and a less fractured, more cohesive class group.
So on that note, I have decided to just run with this activity, I know I felt that the decision was a worthwhile addition to the beginning of the lesson, but seeing what I have this week, I think it is far more beneficial to complete this activity, and the learning and teamwork that comes out of it will be far greater than a collaborative build with no consequences for a lack of team work. So now I need to work out the right balance of space restriction and life restriction for a whole class instead of a small group.
I am still leaning towards 5 lives for the class, and I think an initial space of a radius 100 blocks that doubles on the dawn of the 3rd day. Given this small group I am currently working with is unable to survive past the second day I think it is a good target and I wish I had more than just 90 minutes to run this program with the students as I think 90 minutes will only scratch the surface of the possible outcomes for this activity.
This brings to mind the video Shane and I produced a while ago, talking about the problem solving process while playing Crash Landings. The goal of that 'series' (we have 2 recorded iterations currently, but more planned) is to discuss the potential for teaching the design process and problem solving processes. Having done this activity I really think there is massive potential for that sort of teaching within this space, be it in modded Minecraft like Crash Landings, or vanilla Minecraft with specific restrictions.
Thanks for reading and as always, feel free to leave a comment below.
The Return of Mathlandia
OK, so 2014 was a bit of a slow year for me, this year, 2015, I am going to get back into pushing the boundaries of my teaching. I am lucky enough to be teaching year 8 Math again, and I have spoken to the students about a MinecraftEdu session every fortnight. Of course they are excited, but so am I, I have the first couple of topics pretty much ready to go, I am still deciding how I want to tie it all into "Mathlandia" because ideally I would like to start with the Measurement map with Galacticraft and Mystcraft and actually allow the students to leave the polluted planet and find a new home on a remade Mathlandia home world.
The problem with this is the order of topics we are studying doesn't really line up with this, as we are starting with Probability. I plan on using the new probability map I made for a demo lesson at another school this year and seeing how the whole thing plays out. I could of course complete the probability map, have a 'disaster' that makes the world polluted, but it would require a rewrite of the base Measurement map backstory, which in itself is not an issue, it is just a matter of whether it is 'worth' the required time given the students propensity to ignore backstory and any other reading or text while in class.
The other exciting thing I am trying to maintain this year with this math group is on the opposite weeks to MinecraftEdu we will be using an XBox to gather 'data' to perform basic numerical actions upon to improve basic number fluency with these students. The first session of this XBox is this Friday (as in 2 days away) and the first MinecraftEdu session in which we will do the tutorial world is next Thursday. I am really excited and also hoping to be able to actually find the time to open the base Mathlandia world up for students to interact with at lunch or recess at least once a week.
So the 'to-do' list is quite large, starting with a building a completely new Mathlandia home world, deciding whether to continue using Mystcraft as a way of separating the lessons out and being able to upload each lesson separately to the world share for others. On the sharing of my worlds, I am going to try and upload them 'as is' instead of trying to make them 'perfect' before uploading as this is what I believe to be one of my biggest failings, I have all of these wonderful worlds that 'work' in their current state, but they are not shared because there are things I would do different if I were to use it again, and the time needed to alter them in this manner is normally swallowed by the next project or map as, for me, it is way more fun to build something completely new than alter a pre-existing map, even my own.
Setting the boundaries and ensuring students stay up to date with their assigned book work is also going to be a high priority on the list. Unfortunately if students do not keep up, then I cannot afford to take the time out of 'normal' classes to do these different activities, while they are valuable, I do need to keep pace with the other class and make sure students are getting the required skills and knowledge.
I also am hopefully going to gather some relatively 'hard data' to prove that MinecraftEdu is supporting student learning and knowledge retention of these topics. Having taught almost entirely not in MinecraftEdu last year, I have the data of student growth without it, and comparing that with the data I gather this year when I am teaching with it I hope to 'prove' that it is a valuable tool, rather than just knowing it. I know it is difficult to compare different cohorts, but if I look at relative growth of students rather than comparing the data wholly I hope to be able to make some valid arguments for the continued use of MinecraftEdu at my school and in my classes. This may make the time away from 'normal' classes easier to defend in the future.
OK I have babbled on enough now, just a 'quick' update and hopefully some more regular sharing and lessons will happen over this new school year. Feel free to leave a comment below.
The problem with this is the order of topics we are studying doesn't really line up with this, as we are starting with Probability. I plan on using the new probability map I made for a demo lesson at another school this year and seeing how the whole thing plays out. I could of course complete the probability map, have a 'disaster' that makes the world polluted, but it would require a rewrite of the base Measurement map backstory, which in itself is not an issue, it is just a matter of whether it is 'worth' the required time given the students propensity to ignore backstory and any other reading or text while in class.
The other exciting thing I am trying to maintain this year with this math group is on the opposite weeks to MinecraftEdu we will be using an XBox to gather 'data' to perform basic numerical actions upon to improve basic number fluency with these students. The first session of this XBox is this Friday (as in 2 days away) and the first MinecraftEdu session in which we will do the tutorial world is next Thursday. I am really excited and also hoping to be able to actually find the time to open the base Mathlandia world up for students to interact with at lunch or recess at least once a week.
So the 'to-do' list is quite large, starting with a building a completely new Mathlandia home world, deciding whether to continue using Mystcraft as a way of separating the lessons out and being able to upload each lesson separately to the world share for others. On the sharing of my worlds, I am going to try and upload them 'as is' instead of trying to make them 'perfect' before uploading as this is what I believe to be one of my biggest failings, I have all of these wonderful worlds that 'work' in their current state, but they are not shared because there are things I would do different if I were to use it again, and the time needed to alter them in this manner is normally swallowed by the next project or map as, for me, it is way more fun to build something completely new than alter a pre-existing map, even my own.
Setting the boundaries and ensuring students stay up to date with their assigned book work is also going to be a high priority on the list. Unfortunately if students do not keep up, then I cannot afford to take the time out of 'normal' classes to do these different activities, while they are valuable, I do need to keep pace with the other class and make sure students are getting the required skills and knowledge.
I also am hopefully going to gather some relatively 'hard data' to prove that MinecraftEdu is supporting student learning and knowledge retention of these topics. Having taught almost entirely not in MinecraftEdu last year, I have the data of student growth without it, and comparing that with the data I gather this year when I am teaching with it I hope to 'prove' that it is a valuable tool, rather than just knowing it. I know it is difficult to compare different cohorts, but if I look at relative growth of students rather than comparing the data wholly I hope to be able to make some valid arguments for the continued use of MinecraftEdu at my school and in my classes. This may make the time away from 'normal' classes easier to defend in the future.
OK I have babbled on enough now, just a 'quick' update and hopefully some more regular sharing and lessons will happen over this new school year. Feel free to leave a comment below.
Engaging Students in Minecraft.
Today the year 8 math class and I began our journey in MinecraftEdu towards making Mathlandia the project I always hoped it would be. I am so excited, and so are the students. I explained that there would be a base world where students would just be able to play, in survival, however they wanted. Their response was palpable excitement at the prospect of this, and I mentioned my hope that I can let them into the computer room, and the world at recess at least once a fortnight, hopefully every week.
I went on to explain how we would have a portal to another server where we would do our learning activities, and they would be rewarded with undecided rewards at the conclusion of each task(their first reward they can decide, within reason). Many of these students play Minecraft at home, so that got a stir of excitement as inter-server portals are probably not something that they would have explored before. I then introduced them to our Moodle page, where they will get their tasks, links and what ever else is needed for the lesson and we joined the tutorial world.
The students were off like a rocket, they knew how to play, so once I was sure that everyone had the basics down, we loaded up Mathlandia and I just let them play, gather and begin building their houses. I left night off for the session today, just so that they could get set up and not get frustrated by dying over and over at night.
Now if you are a regular reader, you know that I have been thinking a lot lately about how to make lessons fun and engaging for students. What is it that makes Minecraft fun for students, and how can I utilise that in lessons? Today I received yet another wake up call, which brought about the rest of this post. The engagement in that lesson today was off the charts, every student was working towards whatever goal they had in mind, they were working in small groups towards a common goal and individually towards their own, no arguments, no issues whatsoever.
I've heard lots of similar success stories from other teachers, but it sadly does not seem to be the universal experience in all classrooms. This got me reflecting on how my own practices with Minecraft might differ from those of other teachers. I am a big proponent of the "Minecraft at home is different to Minecraft at school." In fact I regularly use that line when I talk to students and teachers about Minecraft in the classroom. I think the distinction needs to be clearly made in terms of what students expect, however I don't think that the experience in school needs to be completely locked down and so far removed from what makes the game fun for them. In fact I think it would be way better if their learning experience used their knowledge of the game mechanics to complete the lessons the teacher has set.
I feel that if a student doesn't actively play the game at home and the game is ‘locked down’, chances are their experience will not be as negative as a student who is an active player and who knows ‘what they are missing’. So a big part of this year for me will be trying to use the ‘game’ to help me teach, rather than just teaching within the game. But when I hear or read teachers saying that students are disappointed that they cannot reach their 'goals' in Minecraft for whatever reason. I think to myself, why can they not do that, why can the teacher not negotiate with the student to make a valuable learning experience where the student can do the ‘thing’ that will engage them while still reaching the learning goals? So another goal I am working towards this year is to get students feedback on my lessons much more, with pre-lesson and post lesson surveys, focussing on the learning they achieved and what they liked and disliked about the activity, so I can work to improve my lesson design and delivery.
I dont want to be an educator that uses Minecraft in their classes as a 'baby sitter', a 'silver bullet' or just because everyone else is raving about it. I want to use what is a very powerful tool for education in my ‘toolbox’ in the best possible way. I want to use it in my classes because of the engagement, learning and flexibility it can provide. I want to give students the opportunity to learn in a way that they have not before, at least in a formal classroom. Wish me luck and thanks for reading.
I went on to explain how we would have a portal to another server where we would do our learning activities, and they would be rewarded with undecided rewards at the conclusion of each task(their first reward they can decide, within reason). Many of these students play Minecraft at home, so that got a stir of excitement as inter-server portals are probably not something that they would have explored before. I then introduced them to our Moodle page, where they will get their tasks, links and what ever else is needed for the lesson and we joined the tutorial world.
The students were off like a rocket, they knew how to play, so once I was sure that everyone had the basics down, we loaded up Mathlandia and I just let them play, gather and begin building their houses. I left night off for the session today, just so that they could get set up and not get frustrated by dying over and over at night.
Now if you are a regular reader, you know that I have been thinking a lot lately about how to make lessons fun and engaging for students. What is it that makes Minecraft fun for students, and how can I utilise that in lessons? Today I received yet another wake up call, which brought about the rest of this post. The engagement in that lesson today was off the charts, every student was working towards whatever goal they had in mind, they were working in small groups towards a common goal and individually towards their own, no arguments, no issues whatsoever.
I've heard lots of similar success stories from other teachers, but it sadly does not seem to be the universal experience in all classrooms. This got me reflecting on how my own practices with Minecraft might differ from those of other teachers. I am a big proponent of the "Minecraft at home is different to Minecraft at school." In fact I regularly use that line when I talk to students and teachers about Minecraft in the classroom. I think the distinction needs to be clearly made in terms of what students expect, however I don't think that the experience in school needs to be completely locked down and so far removed from what makes the game fun for them. In fact I think it would be way better if their learning experience used their knowledge of the game mechanics to complete the lessons the teacher has set.
I feel that if a student doesn't actively play the game at home and the game is ‘locked down’, chances are their experience will not be as negative as a student who is an active player and who knows ‘what they are missing’. So a big part of this year for me will be trying to use the ‘game’ to help me teach, rather than just teaching within the game. But when I hear or read teachers saying that students are disappointed that they cannot reach their 'goals' in Minecraft for whatever reason. I think to myself, why can they not do that, why can the teacher not negotiate with the student to make a valuable learning experience where the student can do the ‘thing’ that will engage them while still reaching the learning goals? So another goal I am working towards this year is to get students feedback on my lessons much more, with pre-lesson and post lesson surveys, focussing on the learning they achieved and what they liked and disliked about the activity, so I can work to improve my lesson design and delivery.
I dont want to be an educator that uses Minecraft in their classes as a 'baby sitter', a 'silver bullet' or just because everyone else is raving about it. I want to use what is a very powerful tool for education in my ‘toolbox’ in the best possible way. I want to use it in my classes because of the engagement, learning and flexibility it can provide. I want to give students the opportunity to learn in a way that they have not before, at least in a formal classroom. Wish me luck and thanks for reading.
Mathlandia 2015 - Probability
So I am pretty sure I have the first map ready to go for Mathlandia next Thursday. It is a probability experiment, hopefully that can lead to some great discussions on theoretical and experimental probability. I have not completely set up the Moodle for the students yet as I am still not 100% sure on how I want it set up and what will work best, so that will probably remain a work in progress for a bit longer.
This map is a concept I came up with late last year and ran at a school I went to train some staff and students at. However the hardware we used let us down, so I never got to use the map to its full potential. Hopefully next week that will change. I remember writing an almost complete script as to how I would introduce each component of this map, so I will be updating that and making it available with this map. That is right, I am sharing this map to the MinecraftEdu World Library, and I am even going to share it before I run it next week. This is how I am going to improve my map sharing, if it is shared before I use it, I don't know what is 'wrong' with it, and therefore I will not hold onto it to fix those issues before sharing and never get around to it.
Here are some screenshots of the map with explanations as to what is happening at that location.
The sheep barn, with dispensers ready to randomly dispense wool colours. 20 pens of 9 sheep, doubled up for the second experiment where they will use a random number generator to determine the wool colour instead of the dispenser.
The full dispenser, with all the colours the students will need.
The 'free' build area where students will be designing and building their own probability experiment.
If you are interested in looking through the current 'script' follow this link, if you do take the time read it (it may not make sense without access to the map, so if you want the map to look at alongside leave a comment below and I will get it organised) I would really appreciate your feedback on it. It is not wholly complete, and having re-read the script before linking it, neither is the map :D. I Still have to build the advanced probability experiment where students will have to use their knowledge of probability and decide the colour of an unknown sheep after completing some breeding experiments. I also need to display the possible breeding outcomes in tree diagrams and 2-way tables so that students will have to interpret these options.
Thanks for reading, more updates to come as this project moves along. I am so excited to get this going.
This map is a concept I came up with late last year and ran at a school I went to train some staff and students at. However the hardware we used let us down, so I never got to use the map to its full potential. Hopefully next week that will change. I remember writing an almost complete script as to how I would introduce each component of this map, so I will be updating that and making it available with this map. That is right, I am sharing this map to the MinecraftEdu World Library, and I am even going to share it before I run it next week. This is how I am going to improve my map sharing, if it is shared before I use it, I don't know what is 'wrong' with it, and therefore I will not hold onto it to fix those issues before sharing and never get around to it.
Here are some screenshots of the map with explanations as to what is happening at that location.
If you are interested in looking through the current 'script' follow this link, if you do take the time read it (it may not make sense without access to the map, so if you want the map to look at alongside leave a comment below and I will get it organised) I would really appreciate your feedback on it. It is not wholly complete, and having re-read the script before linking it, neither is the map :D. I Still have to build the advanced probability experiment where students will have to use their knowledge of probability and decide the colour of an unknown sheep after completing some breeding experiments. I also need to display the possible breeding outcomes in tree diagrams and 2-way tables so that students will have to interpret these options.
Thanks for reading, more updates to come as this project moves along. I am so excited to get this going.
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