Training Takes Time.

Training takes time, it is not going to happen overnight. This is something I need to remember at the moment while working with these students. The majority of the students are giving the measurement activities a red hot go, but there are others who are just being silly and wasting time. Unfortunately for these latter group of students I am not going to let them continue to waste the revision time. So today I let them know that if they get pulled up tomorrow for being silly and off task, they will go back to doing revision the 'old' way. Hopefully the threat is enough to bring them to task, if not I guess the follow through will. Perhaps a more 'structured' start to using Minecraft in the classroom is needed to introduce students to this type of learning activity. That is what I have done in the past, a much more teacher directed beginning, so it has been interesting to see what happens when it is more student oriented.

On reflection of the new activities I put in, mainly the estimation system, I think they went quite well. Only 2 students got to them today (as expected) and the first time they used it, they over and underestimated but the second time they got it spot on. The system appeared to work quite well, I thought at some point while I was asleep (or trying to) that I could double the speed of the give system to make things go a little quicker for them. I will be chatting to those 2 students to find out their thoughts as to how those sorts of activities were for them, as I plan on putting more in for the volume section.

I did find some flaws in one section of the map, that I did a hot fix for, but I will need a more permanent fix before releasing the map to the World Sharing Site. I think part of the issue was I was making things too complicated, trying to not 'spam' the students chat with things from command, however in the area section I did not do this so I will be interested to see the difference between the two methods and see which the students prefer as well as which provides the best experience.

I cannot wait to finish this map and release it to the public and get some feedback from other teachers/students. I think it is great but I am not sure the students feel the same way at the moment. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment below.