So, on Friday last week I had the opportunity to go into a classroom and run a lesson with a group of primary school students. I asked if I could record in-game footage, and classroom audio so that I could publish a video and guess what? I could, and did! That video is available on my YouTube channel (or below), and I have to say, it was a lot of fun to get back into a classroom and have the opportunity to teach students in Minecraft again. It is not the first time I have done it since I started my new role, but this is the first time the stars aligned, and I was able to record and review my lesson.
Going back through the over 90 minutes of footage and conversations was awesome, and something I forgot, having not done anything like this for a while now, was how much I say "alright" and "OK". It is so darn frustrating, but it is also such a great reflective tool. What I would change, what I need to do different, how the lesson plan needs a little adjusting here and there. I managed to take the over 90 minutes to just around half, so it is around 50 minutes worth of footage. Showing the ups, downs, and collaborative problem solving as things went awry with my plans. Highlighting another issue with flying into schools running things and flying out again, the resources, not that the school wasn't resourced well, they are amazingly resourced, but I needed different resources, which I assumed would be there, and in hindsight, that was pretty stupid of me, but we persevered and got there in the end!
We also found some issues with the map on the day, the settings are a bit off, and yet again the permission behaviours in Minecraft: Education Edition did not behave as I expected them to. I have no idea when, or even if, they have changed, but we live, learn and try to adjust. One thing I have been reflecting on, in light of the changes in the most recent version, is clear documentation, there is none that I have been able to find. So we are all flying blind, making it up as we go, adjusting things on the fly to reach our outcomes, and well, I think that this is just not good enough. The information about the differences between the faculty and student permissions when joining a world is specific to M:EE, and there is no information out there, or at least that I have found, on what these differences are.
With limited access to students, I don't have time to test everything, but with a clearly defined set of parameters, I could definitely tweak my worlds and lesson plans to suit. But more importantly, if I am struggling with permissions, and I have years of experience, what is a new teacher doing? Flying just as blind as me, only possibly without the expertise to tweak things to make them work on the fly.
I have gone through the Bedrock version history, and I am not sure when (or if) this stuff pictured below was added, I don't remember seeing it in version 1.4.0 of M:EE, but who knows whether I missed it or not. I think this has a pretty serious impact on the user experience when planning lessons for others to be able to run. We now have even less control over what happens when others run our worlds, or at least it appears that way. If we cannot 'guarantee' as best we can, the user experience when using our custom worlds created for learning, linked to outcomes, then what is the use of sharing them? The last thing I want myself, or anyone for that matter, to do is to share lessons that cannot effectively be run in a classroom due to world settings being incorrect, and if you watch the video, I already have, because the settings didn't behave as I expected.
Negatives aside, the log in issues have been resolved over here in Victoria, once we got the message through that there were still issues, which next time, will be a lot quicker as I now know the most proper process to make that happen for my teachers here. So with that lesson, and massive amount of fun done, I am now back to collating resources, linking them to my local curriculum and publishing them for my teachers to access. Our 'School Starter Pack' is due to arrive in schools within a week or so, so I really have my work cut out to try and get as many resources, across as many subject areas, and year levels as possible ready to go before they land.
Back to it, thanks for reading, if you have any comments, please feel free to leave them below, or on the YouTube video if that is a more appropriate location.
Going back through the over 90 minutes of footage and conversations was awesome, and something I forgot, having not done anything like this for a while now, was how much I say "alright" and "OK". It is so darn frustrating, but it is also such a great reflective tool. What I would change, what I need to do different, how the lesson plan needs a little adjusting here and there. I managed to take the over 90 minutes to just around half, so it is around 50 minutes worth of footage. Showing the ups, downs, and collaborative problem solving as things went awry with my plans. Highlighting another issue with flying into schools running things and flying out again, the resources, not that the school wasn't resourced well, they are amazingly resourced, but I needed different resources, which I assumed would be there, and in hindsight, that was pretty stupid of me, but we persevered and got there in the end!
We also found some issues with the map on the day, the settings are a bit off, and yet again the permission behaviours in Minecraft: Education Edition did not behave as I expected them to. I have no idea when, or even if, they have changed, but we live, learn and try to adjust. One thing I have been reflecting on, in light of the changes in the most recent version, is clear documentation, there is none that I have been able to find. So we are all flying blind, making it up as we go, adjusting things on the fly to reach our outcomes, and well, I think that this is just not good enough. The information about the differences between the faculty and student permissions when joining a world is specific to M:EE, and there is no information out there, or at least that I have found, on what these differences are.
With limited access to students, I don't have time to test everything, but with a clearly defined set of parameters, I could definitely tweak my worlds and lesson plans to suit. But more importantly, if I am struggling with permissions, and I have years of experience, what is a new teacher doing? Flying just as blind as me, only possibly without the expertise to tweak things to make them work on the fly.
I have gone through the Bedrock version history, and I am not sure when (or if) this stuff pictured below was added, I don't remember seeing it in version 1.4.0 of M:EE, but who knows whether I missed it or not. I think this has a pretty serious impact on the user experience when planning lessons for others to be able to run. We now have even less control over what happens when others run our worlds, or at least it appears that way. If we cannot 'guarantee' as best we can, the user experience when using our custom worlds created for learning, linked to outcomes, then what is the use of sharing them? The last thing I want myself, or anyone for that matter, to do is to share lessons that cannot effectively be run in a classroom due to world settings being incorrect, and if you watch the video, I already have, because the settings didn't behave as I expected.
Negatives aside, the log in issues have been resolved over here in Victoria, once we got the message through that there were still issues, which next time, will be a lot quicker as I now know the most proper process to make that happen for my teachers here. So with that lesson, and massive amount of fun done, I am now back to collating resources, linking them to my local curriculum and publishing them for my teachers to access. Our 'School Starter Pack' is due to arrive in schools within a week or so, so I really have my work cut out to try and get as many resources, across as many subject areas, and year levels as possible ready to go before they land.
Back to it, thanks for reading, if you have any comments, please feel free to leave them below, or on the YouTube video if that is a more appropriate location.
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