Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Reflection Week 6 Task 5


Reflection Week 6 Task 5

The workshops on specific skills have been a real success. The students have shown amazement in the ‘technology” of Minecraft tools. We have seen evidence of their application of their newly acquired skills, pressure plates and redstone.

The students are in fact going home and “having a go” at different skills and coming back ready to work and show their development.  It is wonderful to see these students going from Minecraft novices to almost experts!

In this session we began designing and planning the new structures to be used as teaching tools for the year 3 students. The planned structures are as follows:

Adventure map

Crazy House

Pyramid

Maze sort of place

Monday, August 19, 2013

Quote of the day

"Why don't we get Minecraft homework to do."

I don't know but I am working on it.


Plan for week 6 task 5


Task 5 Week 6 Term 3

Out of World

AFK Tutorial on Redstone conductors of switches/levers

Dictionary 10 min

Building a Dictionary of Minecraft Vocabulary

·         Terminology linked with Minecraft

·         Moving

·         Building

·         Technology of Redstone

Whole group task

Dictionary

10 mins of dictionary development - begin defining the words the groups have already identified. Write definitions for each of the words under the heading identified last week. Extension: add pictures to support the definitions. Take picture from net and Minecraft screen captures (command shift 3)

Design task

Design of structure using paint 20 min or until finished

In World

Project time

Using the plan of their structure designed in paint use this to construct the interactive structure 20 min

Student Team Structures

Teacher will group children. With the aim of putting one more experienced student in each group to give teams an element of experience.

Project time – all teams will be set to task on the structures to build interactive structures

Teams are to design an interactive structure that could include the following components

These components must enable maximum engagement when the year 3 students are using the program

Treasure hunt

Ride

Explore

Problem solving

This session’s focus is:

Learn the communication skills of working as a team.

 Implementing effective delegation

 Taking directions from team mates

Negotiating and valuing the opinions of team mates.

Construction Teams

Insert team names here

Monday, August 12, 2013

Plan TASK 4 Week 5 Term

TASK 4 Week 5 Term 3
In our observations the students seem to be in one of two categories,
Minecraft skilled – want to get in and use all the elements of the software
Lower skilled – need to use the program more freely to increase develop and enhance their skills.
We have geared to give them the opportunity to do this.
AFK - Whole group tasks
TUTORIAL
Gene/Peter10 mins to how the students some items in the inventory and what they can do with it.
Dictionary
Chrisi 10 mins of dictionary development - begin defining the words the groups have already identified. Write definitions for each of the words under the heading identified last week. Extension: add pictures to support the definitions. Take picture from net and Minecraft screen captures (command shift 3)
In World - Project time – all teams will be asked to begin the task of building structures that incorporate some form of interactive elements. As shown in the tutorial today.
Team focus groups
We will be working with one team at a time in ten minute blocks, to develop communication skills. Our aim is to enable them to relay their understandings to other students. How to relay information to others (year 3 students)
This sessions focus is:
Learn the communication skills of working as a team
Implementing effective delegation
Taking direction from team mates
Negotiating and valuing the opinions of team mates

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

A Little Gift

During our last Minecraft class one of our students, who in the past two weeks knew little about what she could create and how to use the software, was suddenly creating and building the most amazing structures and content.  I asked her how she had learnt so much so quickly.  She told me that she had got a copy of Minecraft at home and had been working hard to learn about the sort of things she could build.

I asked her why she had done that expecting her to say because it was fun or interesting. 

Instead she said "well we have to teach the little kids how to use it and be helpful to other students in the class so I thought I would practice at home."

Enough said.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Reflection Session 1 and 2


Reflection Session 1 and 2
Our new group of Minecrafters are here. Things are a little different the second time around.

Our new Minecrafters are full of enthusiasm but are not quite as skilled or experienced in Minecraft. We are beginning to rethink the way we approach our training sessions with them. We feel that they will benefit from specific instruction in the use of elements in Minecraft. Eg pressure plates, powers rails. Our aim is to skill them up in the use of Minecraft tools and inventory items and allow them to trial their application in their structures. We need to get them thinking beyond real world mode and start to thinks about the huge scope of imagination that Minecraft will allow them create the “unimaginable”.

They can’t imagine things if they can’t understand their application.  We want them to dream big build big and apply all of the new skills new ways of thinking and creating in Minecraft.  Once we skill them up then we should find that they are able to build and design structures that they can explore with their year 3 students. Also they will be able to teach them their newly acquired skills.