Wednesday 31 October 2018

Collaborative 'Live Tweeting'

I have had another post brewing for a while now, and I had to put that on hold, because these last 4 (or 5 depending on your timezone) days something has happened that is well and truly worth sharing, discussing and I think, promoting.

It started with this tweet from Simon Baddely:
Which of course he then replied to, stepping out each key point along the path of creating this resource. OK, so it took much longer than 12 hours, and more people than just Simon, but the end result got released just a couple of hours ago. If you don't want to read any more, at least head over to https://www.crosspond.net/projects and check out "Pumpkin Town" and then come back and see my interpretation of the Twitter feed, and how I think this may be one of the greatest ways of sharing the work we do when creating lessons, I don't just mean Minecraft lessons either, but lessons in general!

Now to the debrief, if you want to see the whole Twitter 'stream' you can do that by heading here: https://twitter.com/SimBadd64/status/1056111477818621953 and viewing the replies. I am going to pick out a few, and embed them in here and talk about the value of the tweet, in terms of the narrative being created around the lesson plan, but also about how this is a key step in supporting others to follow.
These two tweets are key to setting the whole scene for the lesson. Starting with an idea, and then straight away going directly to outcomes sets the right stage for learning to be the focus of the world and lesson, rather than something 'tacked' on at the end of a pretty build.
Now we get into the nitty gritty of bringing a 'theoretical build' to life, in the quickest, easiest way possible. Creating that world, block by block would take months of work, Simon achieved it within minutes. The fact that Simon has shared the tools required at each step is so important in building the grounding for others to be able to do the same. It also sets Simon up as someone willing to share his knowledge, and if someone comes across this thread in 6 months time, and wants to know how he went from Tinkercad to MCEdit, clearly Simon knows how to do that, there is visual evidence right there, and since he has begun sharing, chances are he is going to respond to a query just as willingly. There is nothing more maddening then teachers having to re-invent the wheel, over and over again because the process hasn't been shared, or people don't know who to ask for help.
I have skipped quite a few tweets from Simon, and come back to the thread here, because I think it important to highlight that everything before now has been done 'outside' of Minecraft itself, using external tools. Minecraft, up to this point has been a 'testing' tool in terms of sizing and proportions. Not only that, he has shared the direct link to the village he used as the basis of the world. Given the limited nature of tweets, in terms of characters, I am glad that Simon took the time and made the effort to credit the person who made the build available.
This is where I think things get awfully interesting. Simon has used his expertise to generate the base world, and hands it off to his colleague, Ben Spieldenner, to take up the next stage of creating this 'immersive experience'. Clearly in this partnership, each member knows their own expertise, is willing to share and support the other, but also knows when to back off and let someone else do the work in terms of expediting the end result. I think that is an important thing to reflect on, how often do we try to 'do everything for everyone' maybe not really recognising their own strengths, and allowing them to take ownership of their portion of a project. Thinking in terms of students here, how often do we as teachers, 'dictate' the lessons, disregarding student strengths and opinions in the effort to reach our 'assessment outcomes' rather than student 'learning outcomes.'
Ben, as Simon did, takes the very important step of sharing where to get the resources to follow along. He cannot possibly list 'every step' in a tweet, but there is enough there to get someone started, and exploring at least. Again, Ben has set himself up as someone willing to share the exact process, so if others want to follow, they can either try using the information in the tweets, or by contacting Ben directly for support.
Ben continues to share each step, the resources used, and even says in a 'sideways' thread that he will happily share his base template for others to use!
2 days later Ben comes back, and talks about how the narrative is built into the world, the sequence of events and the importance of the learning over the visuals. Both are important to an immersive experience, but immersion without learning is a waste of teachers, and more importantly students time.
I am not skipping many of Ben's tweets, and that is no criticism of what Simon did, it is just this is where I think the importance of learning has been really captured. The outline showed was collaboratively created by both Ben and Simon, and the narrative it creates has been carefully designed to ensure that students have access to just enough information to make their inferences.
Time, the ever present ruler of us all, prevented Ben from achieving all the the visual adjustments he wanted, but there are many other things that a supportive lesson for teachers of all ability levels needs. The world, and visuals are but a part of the package required for teachers to effectively run this in their own classrooms.
Now the madness truly ensues, the crazy guys gave me access to the world, to initiate the spawn location mechanics... Sound fancy? Well, in reality, if we want this map to be usable by teachers, we need to make it as supportive as possible, which means all the game settings dialed in automatically when a student joins the world.
First issue with any 'student loaded' pre-created map with NPCs is WorldBuilder. If you load a world, you have WorldBuilder rights automatically, which means you can destroy NPCs with an accidental left click, and there is no easy way to get them back other than deleting the world and starting again, a massive time waster. So, first task is to remove WorldBuilder from anyone joining the world. What I really valued here was the ability to share, in context, exactly the commands, their purpose and I think that makes it easier for others to see, and use it themselves in future if they need to.
Next was to make sure students have the items they need to engage with and collect evidence from the narrative, and then take information out of the game for their writing piece. The camera, portfolio and book are all given automatically, making a teachers, and students for that matter, job much easier.
I don't want to 'blow my own trumpet' here, but I had an inkling of an idea I wanted to try out, it would have been amazing, but upon reflection, it was just unsuited to the purpose here, and far too risky in terms of 'ruining' the experience for those coming in. So, back to the 'tried and true' rather than the innovative right now. I think highlighting the idea that 'shiny and new' isn't always the most appropriate aligns with the idea that we should be using the best tool for the job, not just the latest.
With my 'job' complete, I hand it back to Ben and Simon for their next steps. Again, using the expertise of those in the community is, I think, a key step to moving the whole community forward. I really appreciate Ben and Simon giving me the opportunity to not only help get the map ready, but engage in the 'live tweeting' of the progress along the way. It really made me think about what steps I was taking, and which are the key steps to share along the way to support others in their endeavours.
I went to bed, and while I slept, Simon and Ben had been working madly to ensure the map worked as intended, threw it to another mentor, Trish Cloud, for their feedback and ideas about how to make the map better. Again, involving members of the community, gathering feedback, ideas and a different perspectives is something that I think makes this whole process shine!
And then, they released it. With a lesson plan, student resources, world download and assessment support. From an idea, to a fully supported lesson in 4 (or 5) days. Just in time for Halloween.
After that, another mentor Ben Kelly picked it up, excitedly, after watching the whole thing unfold on twitter and recorded a short intro. This brings to light the idea that we are a big community, the fact that people were excited to see the process unfold on Twitter is great, amazing in fact. So, why do we not share our processes more often?

Well, the 2 or so hours I spent 'live' tweeting, in terms of Minecraft work, would have probably been about half that time if I hadn't been tweeting it. So an hours worth of work in Minecraft, and an hours worth of thinking and sharing on Twitter. Was it worth it? For me, in this case, yes, not a doubt in my mind. Will it always be worth it? I honestly don't know, I think this whole thing has highlighted some really good tools, thoughts, ideas and resources, but is it sustainable? It is certainly not an 'every day' activity that is for sure.

Well, thanks, as always for reading, I needed to get that off my brain, and now that is done, I will go back to writing my other post. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to drop them in the comments below, or reach out to any of the mentors mentioned in this post on Twitter for their support if you want to access their expertise!
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