Collecting Data and AWESOME Feedback.

My year 8s have just begun studying data. These are some of my learning intentions:


➢ Demonstrate the ability to organise data appropriately, Grouped data, class intervals, Frequency tables
➢ Column Graphs
➢ Calculate the Mean, Median, Mode, Range
➢ Investigate the effects outliers have on these Averages
➢ Measure of Spread (Range)

So I decided to use Minecraft to collect data, I was going to use a map created by Shane where students collect wood with different levels of tool, ie wood, stone, iron..... but I felt that this was not going to provide me with enough data to play with. So I got to thinking..... and thinking...... and thinking...... but I could not think of an 'awesome' yet easy way to get some data out of Minecraft.

So I did what all good teachers do, I collaborated, I asked for another teacher opinion (it happened to be Shane was online and we were discussing whether or not to use his map) and he came up with the brilliant idea to just let the kids free, let them go collect whatever they want, in whatever numbers and at the end of a set time, either a Minecraft day, or some other time they need to collate all of their items into a table.

Then we will head to a second location, and off they will go again collecting more data. I am really looking forward to seeing the amount of data we can pull out of this activity, and really going into depth with how we can use that data to meet all of those learning intentions.

I have decided to keep this separate to Mathlandia for now, for a couple of reasons, if students get lost while caving hunting for those precious gems, or if their pick breaks, or if they run out of torches they can just hit back to spawn and fix those issues, with no input from me. If it was a MystCraft dimension in Mathlandia this would not be the case.

On the feedback side of things I requested that those students who completed the Path to Percentage Perfection to fill in a feedback survey, and what they are saying is astonishing. 5/6 have given it a rating of 8/10 or above for enjoyment. For the question what did you like the most I got the following responses.

• The chests and how you had to actually think, really take the time to look around. 
• the exploration of the many trials and skills it needed 
• I like how i can explore the world and answer questions at the same time 
• getting rewards and looking for rewards on minecraft. i think we should do more!!!!!!!!! 
• It was like a treasure hunt and you actually had to concerntrate to find treasure and get through the right paths and finish the game. I also liked how if you got a question wrong it showed you how to work it out and gave you a similar problem. 
• finding cool stuff doing maths

For what they disliked the most:

• getting lost and confused 
• not being able to do it again. to find more stuff 
• i didn't dislike because i enjoyed doing the task
•  SPIDERS, the SPIDERS man scared the @*$# out of me. some of the things were a bit confusing like when you got back up the Well you had to really look around for ages to find those Tower note things. 
• I didn't like the holes in the ground that you couldn't get out of. 
• when some doors didnt open

All of the students said that they wanted to do an activity like this again in the future. There was an extra comments section, surprisingly, even though it was not a compulsory question, the students answered it. Here is my favourite response: I really enjoyed this event, it was mind blowing at every part. :D

On that note, thanks for reading, feel free to leave a comment below.