Even More Probability

So after the last post I started building the 3rd component of the map and realised quite quickly that the behaviours I expected from sheep breeding were not correct at all. So I did a bit of a Google, and of course that was changed way back in Minecraft 1.4 which created quite a problem for me. The task I wanted the students to do will no longer work in the way I intended. So I have spent the last couple of days figuring out how I can utilise the new game mechanics to achieve the same results and learning for the students.

I think I have finally got it figured out. They will still have their mystery sheep, they will also have a display of all the possible outcomes of sheep breeding pairs. Instead of following my initial experimental design to find out the colour I am going to make them design their own experiments and possibly even more importantly (and much more excitingly) explain why they chose that particular experiment, what their outcome means, what they think the colour is and the probability they are right.

This has stepped up the learning for this particular part of the map well above what I was originally planning, and I am excited to see how the students 'cope' with the higher level of understanding about probability required to interpret the data they have access to and their results and whether this activity will help them gain that higher level of understanding.

The current sheep pens. Walls will be built around these with the sheep breeding options displayed for students.

I have begun building the walls, and the display of the breeding options, however to display all the options will take far too much space. So I am going to only show those that 'merge' the colours, all others I will tell the students create a 50/50 chance of either of the parent colours. I will hopefully finalise the map this weekend and upload it to the world share. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.