Help I’m lost!

This Minecraft class in was interesting from a number of perspectives including, the quality of teamwork observed, the willingness of students to step up and offer help to teachers in a time of need and the amount of work students can achieve when focused and working together with a common goal.

In the end ALL students worked really well but it took a while for us to get there.

To add to the challenges of the class, our Tech guy was away for the day so it was down to us to manage the troops (and all the shenanigans that go with it) for the lesson.

Initially we decided to allow the students to simply work on their group’s project as we were sure they would know what to do once they were in the world.

This was the case, to a degree.

Ready Set Go!

In order to get the class going and to maximise building time in Minecraft we spent recess time logging in and making sure that Minecraft was working. The thinking was that we could review what needed to be done as a group and then they could then jump in and get working.

Is Anybody Out There

Initially, the students were logged in and very excited to be in the Minecraft world but then it became obvious that some of the students couldn’t find each other.  At this stage the attraction of flying around aimlessly (though they said they were “Looking” for their team mates)was too alluring to ignore. As a result he majority of the class flew around and shot arrows at each other.

Given that the map we are using is significant in size being lost is understandable to a degree, BUT given that they started the lesson were where they finished last week makes one question the degree of “how lost” that really were.

The code that saved us(write this down)

At this stage Student O suggested that we could teleport students to each other if they were separated from the group. This was the perfect solution to our current challenging situation.

The code to teleport users is as follows,

/tp NAME_of_login_to_be_moved NAME_of_login_at_destination

in out case the code looked like this

/tpDovetonMC01 DovetonMC16

This code then moves user01 to be standing next to user16

Spent the next 15 min teleporting students to be in the correct location as students were literally all over the place. To add to the confusion, one student was logged in under a different, non-standard login name so could not be moved. We eventually worked out that this was not the student’s doing but probably done by a student during one of the many lunchtime Minecraft clubs that are currently being run.

Working beautifully

Once the students were together in their groups they worked together beautifully. It should be said that a couple of students tried to play the “Im lost again” card when it was noticed they were flying around and not with their group. After being teleported back a couple of times they then joined in with their team.

The quality of the team work and actual amount of progress achieved once the teams got up and running was remarkable with only 2 students not really engaging until an explicit task was given. In hindsight this should have been done more widely across the class  and we will address this next time.

Conclusion

Though the class started out not running as smoothly as planned, the amount of progress the class made on their projects once they were focused and the quality of the teamwork that was observed was remarkable.