Well, that was interesting! Or, never assume anything.

After the positive experience the students had last class, even though the situation was less than perfect, and owing to the avalanche of enthusiasm, we decided that even though the accounts were not set up, we should run the class. We thought that we could achieve a version of the class by combining Minecraft accounts from various places. I offered 2 of mine, we assumed a few students would have accounts and the tech person offered one of his.

This seemed like a good idea until it came to light that most of the students Minecraft experience was based on the iPad version. As a result only 1 student actually had a Minecraft account. This gave us a total of 4 accounts for 20 students. Eventually we put together a total of 7 accounts thanks to the support of our awesome tech guy.

The plan for the class was to pair the students with Minecraft experience with the students new to Minecraft (lovingly called noobs) and get them to teach the noobs. The challenge was that they had to teach their partner how to use the basics of Minecraft without using the keyboard and mouse themselves. It was interesting to observe the inner struggle that some went through initially when they couldn’t simply take over and show.

The goal that we gave the students was that together they had to make a house that included,

• 2 rooms
• a front door
• a door joining the 2 rooms
• a window

Given the issues we faced with accounts at the start of the lessons some students only had a brief amount of time in Minecraft but even so the enthusiasm and camaraderie was great to observe.

The conversations around the room that the staff observed were really positive and supportive. We also observed students using a broad range of Minecraft specific words terminology. On numerous occasions we observed that when the experienced student realised that their partner didn’t understand what was being said, they then had to reflect on what they wanted to say and then say it in a way that their partner could understand.

All in all the lesson was a success. We based this on the fact that the new students could apply their knowledge without assistance in minecraft, they all said they felt they learnt something and felt good about the session. The session was also a success from that staffs point of view. We learnt to never start anything until we have all the licences, and the logins have been tested.

Getting Behind

Usually I like to have every problem sorted and tested before I am prepared to start a program.  This time I broke my own rules and as could be expected we are now all dealing with the consequences.

The overwhelming enthusiasm of the students for a Minecraft project was infectious so we agreed to kick start the program thinking that in two weeks we would be able to get the licenses, create the accounts and begin.

We had an  issue getting the license keys from Minecraft Edu.  The problem was our payment had not been processed and the communication to straighten this out took a few days.

Once we had the accounts we had to create email account for each license.  As we did not want the students using their own email accounts we had to create 25 of our own.  While this may not seem such a massive job, in a busy school with limited time this took us a number of days to sort out.

In future I will go back to my normal plan, build, test, stress test then start a pilot program.

 

Plan for Week 6 Session 3

Week 6

Session 3

Task two

Creative mode

Free for all!

 Sand box session, build, move, explore and build

TEAMs of four

Magic one minute, for team to decide and report on what will be built.

Then in teams go and build it in 20 minutes

Teams get a period of time to reflect using these focus questions,

 How did they work as a team?

What worked well?

 What could be better?

What would they identify as a focus for future students they will be tutoring?

Teams Report back on their findings/discussion and show what they have built.

Reflection Session 2 week 5

Week 5 REFLECTIONS

NOTE - Explore phase is necessary to have the kids get in and have a go before asking them to complete specific tasks. They need time to “play” in this early phase.

 Identified Future focus Skills

Time management

 Planning

Team and peer tutors

Communication

-         verbalise and relay ideas, concepts and skills

-         build vocab terms related to the project, develop on this

-         Build student ability to Identify audience, communicate in an appropriate way - use of example and demonstration

Numeracy

-         Shape, space

-         Measurement

                             -      Language of position

Wow, the stuff we now know, and what we know we dont know.

 The first Minecraft class ran and the results and observations were as follows.

General discussion while we waited for other students to arrive.

What could we do in Minecraft

• Teach noobs
• Make the school
• Make a video for people to show how MC works and put it on the schools Youtube channel

We discussed Virtual worlds in general.

            Battlefield 3 is a virtual world. One student mentioned that when he is in the VW he is free to explore his creativity. Not only can he build things but he can solve problems create strategies and work with others.

Circle time = 30 seconds each person

·      Question, what do you like to do in Minecraft?

o   This was recorded via video. The general answers included

o   Building things

o   Build an entire City

o   Build a community

o   Gather resources

o   Find mines underground

o   Make a world of my own creation

o   Fighting mobs

o   Make “Enderchests”

o   Surviving, gaining XP and killing mobs

o   Do whatever I like

o   Fight the Ender dragon in the nether

We discussed with the students that we will use our logins at school and that they wont be able to use their own personal accounts. (Though this may change.)

We mentioned to the group that we will only be updating Minecraft once a term.

What AWESOME thing would you like to do in MC if you could?

• Summon Herobrien
• Get mods to make the game better
• Discover the secrets of MC
• learn about MC
• Defeat the Ender Dragon
• Make the thing that I always wanted to make(it’s a secret so I cant tell you)
• Have a Pig race
• Build a giant pyramid
• Have a secret code and that gives you a secret house appears and you get a gun and you shoot it and you destroy the world
•  Just play it!
• Destroy Herobrians castle
• Just learn how to play it
• Make a City
• Use Redstone
• Make a place where people can help you destroy things
• Make a community (lots of agreement from the group)
• A blue sword and an underwater city
• Do a black ops Zombie map
• Use Redstone to dispense zombies around the map
• Make the starship enterprise life size
• Go fishing in the group all at the same time

The class then divided in to pairs, chose something to share with the group and then demonstrated it

Topics include,

• Riding a pig
• Fishing
• How to chop down a tree
• How to use a diamond Axe
• How to use redstone
• How to move around
• How to fly
• How to land
• How to make a little roller coaster
• How a bed changes the game from night to day

There were 2 groups that didn’t get a turn. They will go first next week.

All up the class went really well and it is interesting to observe the "type" of students that we have collected. one could say they are almost all cut from the same cloth. :-)

Day one, Plan B!

First Class

Before the first class we had planned to run we encountered numerous challenges before it began. These included,

• We had been unable to roll out the image with Minecraft across the whole lab
• We had a misunderstanding of MinecraftEDU’s payment terms and conditions. As a result the licenses had not yet arrived
• A crucial member of our team called in sick the morning of the day of the class

 As a result of the Students “avalanche of enthusiasm” for the project we decided that the class needed to go ahead, though with significant revision.

The alternate plan for the class was designed to,

• capture the students enthusiasm
• get an understanding of the students skill level and comprehension of the world itself
• find out what THEY would like to do in minecraft,
• Individually
• In small teams
• In large teams
•  Explore what the students loved about Minecraft
• Find out, if they had a totally free choice, what would be something AWESOME to do in Minecraft.

At a stage in the class we will loosely discuss the bigger picture goals for the grade 3 project

They will also form pairs, select something of interest and then demonstrate it to the rest of the group including us. We will explain to the students that they should not assume that others know anything about minecraft. 

Changes to schedule

Week 4

 All of this week’s (Week 4)planning is to move to week 5 as we had not received the licences for Minecraft program.

Restart for next week!

See Peter's post for reflections.
 

Week 5

Session 2

Task one

Minecraft Creative Mode

Free build phase, explore and create

Students are asked to explore the Minecraft software and familiarise themselves with the tools and functions.

Aim of this session is to build skill in operating the software.