The City of Melbourne in Minecraft

It has been a while since I have shared a project from the 'development' side. So, here you go!!

I am in the process of 're-creating' part of the Melbourne CBD in Minecraft as a base for one 'experience' for students across Victoria to participate in next year and beyond. This is a 'trial' run and we have at least one other 'experience' worked out ready to implement in this map if everything goes as well as I expect it will.

My long term plan is to actually 're-create' the entire CBD in Minecraft so that we can get rural and regional students planning trips and exploring the CBD before they come to Melbourne, or even international students to explore the city of Melbourne. But that is getting well ahead of myself.

So far I have spent a total of "a lot" of hours learning the process to get this to happen, and on multiple occasions I have had to throw away what I was working on, and start again because it just wasn't working right. The worst example was last week, I spent about 5 hours on stream testing out processes and getting everything made in Minecraft (Java version) and then I realised that the scale was wrong.... Yup, 5 hours work down the drain, but a great deal of learning happened.

I has taken quite a bit of back and forth to get the 3d files out of the people that hold the data in a format I can use. Originally I was going to go through Tinkercad as I have done that before, but I very quickly found that that process wasn't going to work for this, as it lost way too much 'fidelity' and we had missing 'faces' and holes in the terrain and 'post processing' this would take a very, very long time.

So I hunted out some other processes and spoke to some community experts (thanks Adam Clarke and Adrian Brightmoore!!!! No really.... THANKS!!!) and we have a neat little process. So today, there was even more learning, I spent the morning getting everything sorted and ready in Qubicle (a very neat little software package by the way) to find out that it was way, way easier to 'stitch' the pieces together in MCEdit.

Then after spending an hour or two stitching everything together, in the correct scale, I even saved it multiple times in separate locations along the way only to learn on a re-load that MCEdit cannot 'generate chunks' in PE/Bedrock worlds. Not only that, If the chunks are not generated properly, MCEdit still shows the entire world as if they did, but when you press save... it really doesn't save anything. So that was the entire mornings work thrown away for me, but again, Adrian Brightmoore to the rescue. He showed me a neat little schematic he created that 'generates' chunks in Minecraft by teleporting the player iteratively 'down and across' a Minecraft map.

So with all the learning that happened across the last few weeks and after I had the chunks generated properly it only took about an hour and a half to stitch the 28 different pieces of the below 'city' together. This is larger than the project brief called for, but I am not too sad about that. Next steps for me are 'painting' the city the 'mostly correct' colours in MCEdit, and then putting the finishing touches on the buildings.

The whole 'map' in MCEdit as it stands currently. There is on 'average' 40 blocks of ground underneath the city as I have been told, none of the 'underground buildings' are lower than that.

What the map looks like in Minecraft: Education Edition... currently.

I have a list of 20 or so 'key sites/buildings' that need different 'levels of rendering' so that is the next actual step for me. To pick an example of each 'level' and 'render' it at the appropriate quality. I am really excited by the prospects for this project, and look forward to continuing to share it as we go through the development process.

A future step is to 'liven' up the city somehow, pedestrians, bicycles, trams and the like to make the city as 'alive' as it is in the real world. I am not 100% sure I can do this the way I want, the 'trams' could be 'reskinned' Minecarts, but I also want trains as well, and I don' think I can have both. I am in the 'thinking' process around all of this right now, so early days in this part.

Thanks as always for reading, if you have any comments or feedback, feel free to drop them in the comments section below.

A Lesson Breakdown

So, I finally released my first Minecraft: Education Edition map on the education.minecraft.net website a week or two ago and I have been 'brewing' a reflective post on the lesson plan and the world in the light of my last two posts. Essentially in this post, I am going to break down the world and the teacher lesson plan and try to explain the reasoning behind each section and how I think it 'best' supports teachers to pick up my lesson and run it, regardless of their experience level. The direct link to the lesson is: https://education.minecraft.net/lessons/exploring-contour-maps

So let's start with the world. Each of the below are 'screenshots' of particular key sections or components of the world that I think support teachers to run this lesson. If you would like to download the world and have a look, you will need a M:EE account of course, but if you have that, feel free to grab the world and have a look here: http://bit.ly/EduelfieContours If you don't have an EE account, feel free to reach out in the comments below or on Twitter @EduElfie, as I may be able to give you a non-EE, Bedrock or even possibly a Java version to explore, but of course you wont have the border blocks, or the NPCs.

An overview of the world. It is not as 'neat' as I would like it to be on the sides, but that is because I converted this over from an old MinecraftEdu world. Each section is surrounded in border blocks to prevent students crossing into areas that they are not supposed to go into. I have also put visual cues in for both the students and teachers to refer to for each of the 3 groups.

The 'tutorial' mound. This supports both teachers and students to 'see' what the task involves before being 'unleashed' onto the main task(s). There is a 'tutorial' section for both activity 1 (shown) and activity 2.

The grouping section. In the lesson plan, I have suggested that teachers can have up to 3 groups, and the colours associated with them. These border blocks are removed by a command block that the teacher hits when they are ready for students to start the first main task of the lesson. I think that is a key component, students are natively curious, and will head over to the NPCs and chat to them, and possibly miss the opportunity to complete the tutorial section. Students cannot interact with the NPC's while the border blocks are there. Each NPC is programmed to tell students what group they are part of and then teleport any player standing on the coloured carpet to the appropriate group location. There is one of these for both activity 1 and activity 2.

The teacher control panel. At the click of a button, with the appropriate instructions in the lesson plan, the teacher can choose the number of groups for activity 1, teleport all students to the tutorial area for activity 2, or choose the number of groups for activity 2. Teachers have the explicit /tp x y z command in the instructions to make it easier and quicker to get to this location.

So that probably wraps up the key parts of the map. Are there things that I could improve and make it easier for teachers to manage? Possibly, but I think each has enough 'cons' vs the 'pros' that I think it is as easy as I can make it currently. One concern is that once a student teleports to their 'mountain' there is no way back. This could be problematic if a student is standing on the wrong coloured carpet and someone else talks to the NPC, but there is no simple solution for this. My only 'easy' fix would be for the teacher to use either classroom mode, or explicit /tp commands to move students to the appropriate group, or put up with the change in circumstances.

Other options to resolve this would be to do a 'one at a time' teleport system, or to border block the NPC in a different way, and get the teacher to tell students to stand on the colour that signifies their group, and then hit the button to remove the border blocks, or finally set an 'automatic' teleport based on what block students are standing on once the teacher has 'opened' the option to teleport. All of these options are viable, but, in my opinion, not quite as straight forward for a teacher to use in a classroom.

Secondly, if the teacher decides to have multiple groups, and one group finishes activity 1 first, there is no easy way of getting just that group to the tutorial for activity 2, or all students to the tutorial activity 2 and those who haven't finished 'back' to activity 1 once the tutorial is completed. This is even trickier than the first problem, and I think my only solution would come from having access to scoreboards in M:EE, which will hopefully happen soon given tweets about scoreboards coming to Bedrock! It would essentially allow the teacher to 'tag' particular groups as having completed activity 1, and then teleporting based on that information. This would also mean a 'redesign' of the grouping mechanic and tagging students with their group colour as a piece of data as well, but all theoretically doable with scoreboards.

Actually, this thought process has given me a solution that would work right now. I was recently using xp levels as a mode of 'recognising' particular students, and in theory, I could re-set this map up to use that mechanic to signify what group students are in, and whether they have completed activity 1... hmmmmm.... possibly a job for a future Elfie, if he ever gets the time to revisit it before scoreboards!

Now to the lesson plan itself. I am going to screenshot sections of the document, as I did the map, and outline why I think these sections are valuable for teachers, but if you want the whole document itself, you can download that from: http://bit.ly/EduelfieContourLP

I think this one speaks for itself, the target age group, and the links to curriculum. As mentioned in the previous post(s), these are in my local curriculum 'speak' and I would expect teachers from other states/countries to be able to 'convert' these to their own standards, although adding in the ages I think is something that supports globally.

While these "Learning Intentions" and "Success Criteria" headings are possibly local language here, essentially they are learning goals, and how students will know that they have been successful at meeting the learning goals. These can be used to explain to students what the task is, and how they will know if they have successfully completed the task. They are also very useful to explain to the teacher what to expect from their students through this activity.

I really like the idea of explaining clearly what it is the teacher needs to do before the lesson to prepare for the actual lesson. Running almost any Minecraft lesson is not a pick up an go kind of deal, there is preparation that needs to be done before hand. Be that learning the appropriate steps, or printing resources ready for the students to use during the class.

The introduction to students. I am not sure I 'nailed' this, and would be interested in feedback. I think being able to clearly explain to students what the task is, and what they will be doing is a key to any successful lesson, be it in Minecraft or not. I also think the explanation here has enough for any teacher to step up and explain to students the task that they will be completing in this lesson, be they 'geography' trained or not.

Step by step instructions for each activity. This is for the introductory/demonstration task. There is a sub section in the document for each task in the lesson. This particular one outlines exactly what to expect when students join the world, and explains what the task is in this location.

This is the start of explanation for activity 1, including the, hopefully clear, instructions for the teacher to get to the 'Teacher Control Platform" and what options are available for them there and how to 'implement' these changes. This section also explains what impact these selections will have on the world, and the students so that there is minimal surprise, and the teacher can also outline to the students what they can expect at each stage.

Skipping over a few sections to the instructions for activity 2. I have included (in activity 1 as well) suggested opportunities for the teacher to request that students gather evidence of their progress, work or learning as well as possible discussion points to take the students learning out of the game, and into the real world. Again supporting teachers to be able to clearly explain what it is they want students to 'produce' as evidence of their learning.

I think all of these sections are important, otherwise they wouldn't be in the document to begin with, but this is possibly one of the most important sections in the whole document. The review section provides suggestions and pointers for the teacher to be able to 'sum up' the learning that students did, and ensure that the learning they expected to happen through completing the task did in fact happen. I think one of the most important things we can do as teachers, in any lesson, but particularly when we are using games in the classroom, is make sure that students know that they actually learnt something. Not only that, but make sure that they are able to actually explain what it is they learnt in such a way that anyone listening can understand what happened.

This is the final section in the document, and is there to make sure that the teacher has a clear indication of the evidence they could collect from students about their learning. Whether these are collected and placed in a 'real world' portfolio of learning by students, or just 'sighted' by the teacher to ensure that the teacher is comfortable reporting that the student met this particular curriculum outcome.

I also really think the 'incidental' learning section is a nice touch, as it explains to teachers that it is not all about the 'curriculum', but that by completing this task students learnt things (possibly) about Minecraft: EE, in terms of the game itself, or the camera/portfolio, but more importantly that last point about Collaboration/Communication. While creating resources recently I have spent a lot of time going through our local curriculum documentation, and there are so many 'outcomes' that could be listed for any collaborative activity in Minecraft.

I have deliberately chosen not to list them all, in the interest of keeping the focus on the specific learning outcomes for this task, however I think it is important to call attention to the fact that there is a lot more learning going on any time something is collaborative. In our system over here, we have 4 'capabilities' which are supposed to be taught across all subject areas, and I think Minecraft is a great platform for actually being able to assess, and report on, many of these capabilities.

Alright, that is one very, very, very long post. If you made it all the way to the bottom, I thank you sincerely for sticking with me through it all. I also hope that by breaking down the world, and lesson plan that I have helped explain my thought process, and why I think these sorts of detailed lesson plans are important in supporting teachers new and old to run lessons that they have not designed in Minecraft.

I also hope it has helped you think about your own lessons, be they in Minecraft or not, and how you may be able to better share your thinking and reasoning when providing support to others around these lessons you have run in the past. As always, feel free to drop any comments or feedback below.