I started writing this post started a week ago, but the week has just keep rolling and I have so much to share, so be prepared for another long post!
I love it how kids can break a 'planned' map within minutes! Admittedly it was party due to my own stupidity, and it took less than 5 minutes to fix, but I love how 'exploratory' they are when they get into any new Minecraft world, and how hard it is to 'cater' for all of those explorations! It is a challenge I always relish when creating a map, and seeing it happen in a classroom, how much can I prevent students 'breaking' what I have created, not truly with the view to limiting their potential, but making it easier for the teachers to manage their classes in an environment where students are normally way more comfortable than the teacher.
So, that paragraph above is in relation to me having my first opportunity to go to a school here on Friday, and watch another teacher run one of my lessons in their classroom. I tried to stay as hands off, and 'observer' as possible, but it is really not very easy! I think that is something I really need to work on, I love team teaching and collaborating, but there are times where I need to step back and let things happen.
Not that there was anything terrible happening in the classroom, but since the students 'subverted' my map within the starting minutes, I did step in and 'fix' the map and get them back on track for the teacher I was working with. Other than that minor mishap, the lesson ran very smoothly and the teacher used the lesson plan effectively to get the students to reach the learning outcomes of activity 1 of the Contour Maps lesson. I am also sad to say that I really didn't stay hands off throughout the lesson, so that is really, really something I need to manage better, and now one of my personal goals is to be able to observe a lesson in Minecraft without stepping in!
Jump over the weekend to Monday, I am back at the same school as Friday, but this time working with a teacher who has never used Minecraft in the classroom before. We were running the same Contour Maps lesson as I was supposed to be 'hands of' and observing on the Friday, but this time I was facilitating.
The great thing, my map fix worked, and I found some other 'alterations' that I could make, these are not as 'game breaking' as the initial issues on Friday, but if I get a chance I will probably go and address these issues.
I left after class on Monday with the teacher willing to continue the activity herself, and seeing how valuable Minecraft was to not only teach that particular session, but how valuable it could be across other lessons, classes and ideas.
A bit of sleep later and it is Tuesday, and I say a bit of sleep because I think I only slept for a total about 4 or so hours! Got up at 4:30am, and headed off to Melbourne to run a 'next steps' training day with 20 or so teachers from around the state that had already attended the day 1 training. This was so much fun, to take teachers from having heard about Minecraft: Education Edition, through the program I have designed, to by the end of day 2 being able to see, plan and have a clear vision of how Minecraft was relevant to one of their upcoming lessons or topics.
Each and every teacher left that day with a lesson plan underway that would support them and their students back in the classroom. One teacher has already shared their proposed plan with me, and I have provided feedback. The conversations in the room were absolutely fantastic, most of the afternoon was advising the teachers whether what they 'wanted' to do was actually possible in Minecraft;
Q:"Can I make the water poisonous?"
A:"Sure you can, here is how, but we will worry about the full mechanics later, keep planning along that path."
Q:"Can I give students a set amount of 'money'?"
A:"Yep, there are plenty of ways to do that, we'll figure out the best way once your plan is complete."
Q:"Can we swap from creative mode to survival mode half way through a project and make sure that kids don't 'carry' anything through that change?"
A: "For sure, we can do that! The /clear command will work for that."
It really got me reflecting on what it takes to support a teacher from knowing about Minecraft, dabbling either on their own or with students, and then implementing it into a classroom for learning. It is an iterative process, and one that takes time, and commitment of course. I really liked that teachers had the opportunity, even though not all had taken it, to explore and use Minecraft with their students between the day 1 training and this follow up one.
Wednesday was a bit of a quieter day, I was pretty wrecked from the 14 hours of high energy the day before, but had a few meetings about projects going on and generally caught up on my paperwork and emails from the previous days. Although I did spend the afternoon working on resources to take into a school the following day where I spent the entire day teaching primary students about fractions using Minecraft.
There were three different classes, a year 3-6 started me off, and we managed get everyone logged in for the first time, got them comfortable with the controls on PC, introduced the camera and portfolio, before getting into the fractions learning objectives.
Following that I went into a F-1 class, same deal, got them all logged in, 3 adults in the room supporting this whole process and it went remarkably well. I should note here that I am qualified 'secondary' teacher, which means I am 'trained' to teach from year 7-12, but being in a primary classroom with younger kids is definitely fun (for shorter periods, I don't know how these teachers make it through a 10 week term with the energy levels required day in and day out!) and a challenge for my teaching skills.
We started kids exploring whether they could halve all kinds of numbers, or only some. Investigative exploration by building in Minecraft, and the kids were showing different ways of 'working it out' which was absolutely everything I had hoped they would do.
After that I headed into a 1-3 class and boy was my 'target' for the learning well and truly off!! It was a massive challenge to try and get my own 'headspace' into the right location to support these students in their fraction learning. I learnt a lot, and I mean a LOT, about the 'actual' levels of students working knowledge and ability, throughout the whole day, having not taught these year levels before.
After all the classes were finished and the kids had gone home for the day, we had a staff debrief about what was seen throughout the day, and what the next steps were. I am very pleased to say, each of the teachers I worked with said it was awesome, and they could see how they could use it moving forward, and they also each felt comfortable enough to get students demonstrating their understanding of mathematical concepts in Minecraft.
So another huge day, but another massive success, since my 'task' from the principal was the following: "The purpose of your visit should be to make staff comfortable enough to go to Minecraft to complement their current maths programs when required and be given enough confidence to know how to control the Minecraft environment."
And that brings us to today, where I have spent the day going through the feedback from teachers at the training on Tuesday, about what their experiences were between day 1 and 2, and what they got out of the day 2 training, and what they would like next to support them. I am in the process of working towards their requests and figuring out how I can support teachers going from the day 2 training, into what I have planned for the day 3, advanced workshop.
Alongside all of this at some stage this week, I have arranged, what I hope to be, a collaborative livestream event with teachers from around the globe to share their skills and expertise at 'lesson design' with respect to moving students around their Minecraft worlds during lessons. I know there are so many different ways of actually doing it, and a few that I regularly use that might support other teachers to more effectively manage large distances between build locations and I am hoping a few others will come along and share their ways, and we will have a nice overview/tutorial type stream which will be edited for YouTube as well for teachers to access.
This event will be happening on the 24th of October at 9:30pm local time for me, that is GMT+11, if you want to get involved, join the Minecraft Mentor Discord for the full details, if you just want to watch, head over to http://www.twitch.tv/eduelfie at the appointed time!
OK, 'wall-o-text' done, I really need to get better at taking pictures of student work when in classrooms, or teachers work when in trainings, but I am just too darn busy to remember it seems. Oh well, yet another 'something' for me to work on in the future! Thanks for reading, if you have any comments, or something great to share from your recent past, feel free to drop it in the comments below.
I love it how kids can break a 'planned' map within minutes! Admittedly it was party due to my own stupidity, and it took less than 5 minutes to fix, but I love how 'exploratory' they are when they get into any new Minecraft world, and how hard it is to 'cater' for all of those explorations! It is a challenge I always relish when creating a map, and seeing it happen in a classroom, how much can I prevent students 'breaking' what I have created, not truly with the view to limiting their potential, but making it easier for the teachers to manage their classes in an environment where students are normally way more comfortable than the teacher.
So, that paragraph above is in relation to me having my first opportunity to go to a school here on Friday, and watch another teacher run one of my lessons in their classroom. I tried to stay as hands off, and 'observer' as possible, but it is really not very easy! I think that is something I really need to work on, I love team teaching and collaborating, but there are times where I need to step back and let things happen.
Not that there was anything terrible happening in the classroom, but since the students 'subverted' my map within the starting minutes, I did step in and 'fix' the map and get them back on track for the teacher I was working with. Other than that minor mishap, the lesson ran very smoothly and the teacher used the lesson plan effectively to get the students to reach the learning outcomes of activity 1 of the Contour Maps lesson. I am also sad to say that I really didn't stay hands off throughout the lesson, so that is really, really something I need to manage better, and now one of my personal goals is to be able to observe a lesson in Minecraft without stepping in!
Jump over the weekend to Monday, I am back at the same school as Friday, but this time working with a teacher who has never used Minecraft in the classroom before. We were running the same Contour Maps lesson as I was supposed to be 'hands of' and observing on the Friday, but this time I was facilitating.
The great thing, my map fix worked, and I found some other 'alterations' that I could make, these are not as 'game breaking' as the initial issues on Friday, but if I get a chance I will probably go and address these issues.
I left after class on Monday with the teacher willing to continue the activity herself, and seeing how valuable Minecraft was to not only teach that particular session, but how valuable it could be across other lessons, classes and ideas.
A bit of sleep later and it is Tuesday, and I say a bit of sleep because I think I only slept for a total about 4 or so hours! Got up at 4:30am, and headed off to Melbourne to run a 'next steps' training day with 20 or so teachers from around the state that had already attended the day 1 training. This was so much fun, to take teachers from having heard about Minecraft: Education Edition, through the program I have designed, to by the end of day 2 being able to see, plan and have a clear vision of how Minecraft was relevant to one of their upcoming lessons or topics.
Each and every teacher left that day with a lesson plan underway that would support them and their students back in the classroom. One teacher has already shared their proposed plan with me, and I have provided feedback. The conversations in the room were absolutely fantastic, most of the afternoon was advising the teachers whether what they 'wanted' to do was actually possible in Minecraft;
Q:"Can I make the water poisonous?"
A:"Sure you can, here is how, but we will worry about the full mechanics later, keep planning along that path."
Q:"Can I give students a set amount of 'money'?"
A:"Yep, there are plenty of ways to do that, we'll figure out the best way once your plan is complete."
Q:"Can we swap from creative mode to survival mode half way through a project and make sure that kids don't 'carry' anything through that change?"
A: "For sure, we can do that! The /clear command will work for that."
It really got me reflecting on what it takes to support a teacher from knowing about Minecraft, dabbling either on their own or with students, and then implementing it into a classroom for learning. It is an iterative process, and one that takes time, and commitment of course. I really liked that teachers had the opportunity, even though not all had taken it, to explore and use Minecraft with their students between the day 1 training and this follow up one.
Wednesday was a bit of a quieter day, I was pretty wrecked from the 14 hours of high energy the day before, but had a few meetings about projects going on and generally caught up on my paperwork and emails from the previous days. Although I did spend the afternoon working on resources to take into a school the following day where I spent the entire day teaching primary students about fractions using Minecraft.
There were three different classes, a year 3-6 started me off, and we managed get everyone logged in for the first time, got them comfortable with the controls on PC, introduced the camera and portfolio, before getting into the fractions learning objectives.
Following that I went into a F-1 class, same deal, got them all logged in, 3 adults in the room supporting this whole process and it went remarkably well. I should note here that I am qualified 'secondary' teacher, which means I am 'trained' to teach from year 7-12, but being in a primary classroom with younger kids is definitely fun (for shorter periods, I don't know how these teachers make it through a 10 week term with the energy levels required day in and day out!) and a challenge for my teaching skills.
We started kids exploring whether they could halve all kinds of numbers, or only some. Investigative exploration by building in Minecraft, and the kids were showing different ways of 'working it out' which was absolutely everything I had hoped they would do.
After that I headed into a 1-3 class and boy was my 'target' for the learning well and truly off!! It was a massive challenge to try and get my own 'headspace' into the right location to support these students in their fraction learning. I learnt a lot, and I mean a LOT, about the 'actual' levels of students working knowledge and ability, throughout the whole day, having not taught these year levels before.
After all the classes were finished and the kids had gone home for the day, we had a staff debrief about what was seen throughout the day, and what the next steps were. I am very pleased to say, each of the teachers I worked with said it was awesome, and they could see how they could use it moving forward, and they also each felt comfortable enough to get students demonstrating their understanding of mathematical concepts in Minecraft.
So another huge day, but another massive success, since my 'task' from the principal was the following: "The purpose of your visit should be to make staff comfortable enough to go to Minecraft to complement their current maths programs when required and be given enough confidence to know how to control the Minecraft environment."
And that brings us to today, where I have spent the day going through the feedback from teachers at the training on Tuesday, about what their experiences were between day 1 and 2, and what they got out of the day 2 training, and what they would like next to support them. I am in the process of working towards their requests and figuring out how I can support teachers going from the day 2 training, into what I have planned for the day 3, advanced workshop.
Alongside all of this at some stage this week, I have arranged, what I hope to be, a collaborative livestream event with teachers from around the globe to share their skills and expertise at 'lesson design' with respect to moving students around their Minecraft worlds during lessons. I know there are so many different ways of actually doing it, and a few that I regularly use that might support other teachers to more effectively manage large distances between build locations and I am hoping a few others will come along and share their ways, and we will have a nice overview/tutorial type stream which will be edited for YouTube as well for teachers to access.
This event will be happening on the 24th of October at 9:30pm local time for me, that is GMT+11, if you want to get involved, join the Minecraft Mentor Discord for the full details, if you just want to watch, head over to http://www.twitch.tv/eduelfie at the appointed time!
OK, 'wall-o-text' done, I really need to get better at taking pictures of student work when in classrooms, or teachers work when in trainings, but I am just too darn busy to remember it seems. Oh well, yet another 'something' for me to work on in the future! Thanks for reading, if you have any comments, or something great to share from your recent past, feel free to drop it in the comments below.
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