So, knowing the update was out, and that some schools set up auto update and others don't, given my experiences the other day, I contacted the teacher I was working with on Thursday afternoon to work out what version of M:EE she was running. Settling on the latest, I then updated my laptop again so I was in line with her version.
Fast forward about 18 hours, just as we are starting to get students into M:EE for the first time. Everyone is logging in with success, picking skins, and then I glance at the version numbers on a couple of machines; Uh Oh!
Some are running 1.4.0 and others are running 1.0.27, out the window goes the idea of having the whole class in the one world. Some students are working in groups, some are working individually, so with a quick (and stressful) check, there were only 2 groups where members had different versions. With a quick shuffle of computers we sorted out one group, and while we were shuffling the other group, one of those computers then magically updated between log ins.
We tried a couple of restarts and log ins on the other computer to see if that would auto update magically between times, but alas we had no luck, so that particular group had to separate and work individually. I cannot work out why some machines had updated, and updated so quickly, while others did not even look to start to update, let alone finish. I guess this is just the way that windows updates are handled in this school environment (and I am sure many others).
Needless to say, I have put in a request on the product feedback area for an 'Update Now' button to see if that would alleviate this issue in the future, but I am not sure how that would work with a windows store program, and also within a school network.
Now to the task students were working on, it was pretty straight forward, students had researched and planned out a build of an ancient building of their own choice, and were putting those plans into action. Like last time, there were a few standout builds, but everyone had success. All the students learned how to create their own world, join a hosted world, take selfies and pictures with the camera and caption them as well as export them for their teacher.
Given that students were working in a student hosted world, rather than a teacher hosted world, it was also important that they exported their world at the end of the class as well, since the worlds are not user specific, but computer specific, and these are not personal devices, in theory, anybody could come into those worlds in the future and destroy/modify those builds. So we had to teach them how to export their world, and import it again for next time so that they had it at exactly the same spot that they left it.
Unfortunately due to the multiple hosts and differing versions, the recording of students in-game was impossible, and since the students were sending their portfolios to the teacher, I didn't get any of them yet either. This means no pictures again today.
I leave in an hour to go back to the primary school I was at last week, to spend a couple of hours going through some world building tips and strategies with the teacher there, he is keen to get started building his own lessons, rather than relying on me, or others to build them for him. Which I think is a great idea, and I am really looking forward to seeing what he needs to create in his first map, and what kind of support/instructions I can provide to help get him there.
That's it for now, thanks as always for reading, feel free to leave a comment below.
Fast forward about 18 hours, just as we are starting to get students into M:EE for the first time. Everyone is logging in with success, picking skins, and then I glance at the version numbers on a couple of machines; Uh Oh!
Some are running 1.4.0 and others are running 1.0.27, out the window goes the idea of having the whole class in the one world. Some students are working in groups, some are working individually, so with a quick (and stressful) check, there were only 2 groups where members had different versions. With a quick shuffle of computers we sorted out one group, and while we were shuffling the other group, one of those computers then magically updated between log ins.
We tried a couple of restarts and log ins on the other computer to see if that would auto update magically between times, but alas we had no luck, so that particular group had to separate and work individually. I cannot work out why some machines had updated, and updated so quickly, while others did not even look to start to update, let alone finish. I guess this is just the way that windows updates are handled in this school environment (and I am sure many others).
Needless to say, I have put in a request on the product feedback area for an 'Update Now' button to see if that would alleviate this issue in the future, but I am not sure how that would work with a windows store program, and also within a school network.
Now to the task students were working on, it was pretty straight forward, students had researched and planned out a build of an ancient building of their own choice, and were putting those plans into action. Like last time, there were a few standout builds, but everyone had success. All the students learned how to create their own world, join a hosted world, take selfies and pictures with the camera and caption them as well as export them for their teacher.
Given that students were working in a student hosted world, rather than a teacher hosted world, it was also important that they exported their world at the end of the class as well, since the worlds are not user specific, but computer specific, and these are not personal devices, in theory, anybody could come into those worlds in the future and destroy/modify those builds. So we had to teach them how to export their world, and import it again for next time so that they had it at exactly the same spot that they left it.
Unfortunately due to the multiple hosts and differing versions, the recording of students in-game was impossible, and since the students were sending their portfolios to the teacher, I didn't get any of them yet either. This means no pictures again today.
I leave in an hour to go back to the primary school I was at last week, to spend a couple of hours going through some world building tips and strategies with the teacher there, he is keen to get started building his own lessons, rather than relying on me, or others to build them for him. Which I think is a great idea, and I am really looking forward to seeing what he needs to create in his first map, and what kind of support/instructions I can provide to help get him there.
That's it for now, thanks as always for reading, feel free to leave a comment below.
No comments:
Post a Comment