Pleasing Statistics

I said a couple of posts ago, that I was going to start sharing some of the positives happening around Minecraft here, and this post is one of those shares. Also, before we get into it, I would like to thank everyone who read my previous posts and engaged with me, with offers of support, a person to talk to and for those conversations that continued the discussion. I really, and I mean, that, really appreciate your time and comments.

For the record, I am fine, yes, I have had a bad couple of weeks, but a lot of that had been taking up space in my head for far too long, and I felt I wasn't being true to myself, and sharing 'warts and all' of my Minecraft in education journey, as I have in the past. I want to reiterate to everyone, this was just one mans opinion, on one mans experience lately. I don't blame anyone, on the M:EE team, or the wider Minecraft in education community for this, it is what it is, and we take stock, reflect and move on. I am still here, and intend on still being here, sharing all the great, and not so great things about Minecraft in education from my perspective. Now, to the positive stuff!

As part of my role, I have had the pleasure of updating my resources for my teachers here, to reflect the curriculum outcomes, and making sure they work with the new version, updating them from MinecraftEdu has been a trip down memory lane, let me tell you! As I have shared these on the M:EE website, I have been using bit.ly links to track how much they are used, out of an interests sake. It is surprising to look at that data, from an objective perspective and try to make sense of it.

I will share some of the data, and what I think that it means, and why I think this data says awesome things about the teachers looking for content to use in their classrooms from the M:EE site.

Sheepish Probability World - 25 downloads
Sheepish Probability Student Worksheet - 25 downloads
Sheepish Probability Lesson Plan - 38 downloads

Animal Cell Student Worksheet - 17 downloads
Animal Cell Lesson Plan - 19 downloads
Animal Cell World - 17 downloads

These are the two I want to discuss right now, I will leave my third piece of content for a little bit, and come to that after we discuss this lot. I look at this data, and it pleases me, a lot. This tells me, that the majority of users searching through the site, look at the lesson plan, and then decide whether they want the world and student worksheet or not. This is brilliant, and exactly what I would hope for. I don't mind how many read the lesson plan and don't download the world, because it means it is not suitable for their class, or their learning outcomes. I would love to know whether it was just that it wasn't suited, or too hard, or too involved, or whatever, but I can only guess at the true reasons, and I am hoping it is just not relevant. I think this is absolutely amazing, if my guess is right!

Now here is the third piece of content I have on the M:EE website.

Exploring Contour Maps Lesson Plan - 55 downloads
Exploring Contour Maps World - 82 downloads

Now there is not only a difference in the total number of downloads (all three of the lessons were released within the same week), and I will explain that, but the data is also reversed, and I have a guess as to why. This lesson was highlighted in the October Minecraft Education newsletter, which brings a whole different audience to the table. These are not teachers hunting the site for something specific, these are people looking at highlighted content. They are not so much interested in the learning outcomes it seems, or the plan associated with the world, they are more interested in looking at the world. Which I find interesting, but cannot explain further than that.

What is interesting, for me at least, is I have not advertised these lessons anywhere but once on Twitter when they were first released, and ego aside, my reach on Twitter is not all that impressive. So, what do I take from this set of data?

1. Teachers are searching the M:EE site looking for relevant content.
2. These teachers are willing to explore deeply into lesson plans to determine whether it is suitable.
3. If it is not suitable, they clearly head off and keep hunting, if it is suitable, they grab the world and other associated resources.
4. I need to keep sharing my content to support teachers, because it is clear that some are finding my content, and they are finding it useful for their own classrooms.

That's it from me right now, if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below. If you are tracking your own content, are you seeing the same kind of trend? Do you have a different opinion as to what this means? Thanks for reading!