Classrooms are FUN! Permissions are NOT!!

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.

Activity vs Lesson: A Day 2 Take Away

This is the post I promised weeks ago or was it a month ago now... who knows, but finally here it is for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, and please leave a comment below if this resonated with you, or your opinion is different, I would love to engage further around this idea.

I have spent countless hours mulling over the best way to on-board teachers to Minecraft in their classrooms and developing training to make this happen. It was extraordinary to run my first 'Day 2' training with a group of teachers here.

I have never seen the lights go on quite so quick as when I gave this group of teachers the choice between a set of carefully chosen activities from the suite of Minecraft:EE Activity of the week. I wanted to make sure the curriculum links could be clearly visible with a bit of prodding.

Without any instructions other than to complete the activity, and a time limit within which to do it in, off they went. They had a great time, who doesn't! After the time limit was up I started with my prodding, by asking the following questions:
"What is next after this activity?"
"What learning outcomes do you think it covers?"
"What could you discuss with students about this activity?"

It wasn't until that point that they really got the distinction between an activity and a lesson. Not only that, we kept going and had a discussion about how important it was for them, as the teachers in 'charge' of student learning, to be very clear in their own mind about what students are gaining, with regards to learning outcomes, from working in Minecraft.

What was great, is then we went into collaborative activities and showed the absolute value of collaborative work in Minecraft worlds, this is an activity I think should probably be in day 1, and I plan on doing so. I even did this at another event, in a 45 minute training session. Got groups of teachers who didn't know eachother, to join a world and work together on creating something. Then share what happened, what outcomes we could pull from it, and what the next steps may have been.

Back to the day 2 training group, we then, with some friendly advice and suggestions from years of developing Minecraft lessons, began to plan and develop their own lessons, linked to their own teaching, their own plans and their own classrooms.

Each and every participant had at least a half ready plan for implementation in a particular topic or lesson linked to learning outcomes by the time they left the training day. We are about due to catch up and discuss how these lessons went, or what stopped them coming to fruition and start the planning process again ready for next year.

It is exciting times here, and things are starting to gain solid traction. The most recent data set has 300 teachers across the state, using this with 24 students each, on average 7 times a month. This is all averages, and well, may mean very little, but if that is the 'average' it is absolutely astonishing, and something I am very proud to have been a part of.

Thanks for reading and as always feel free to leave a comment below.

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!

The Global Mentor Program - One Mans Opinion

This post was initially written directly after my previous post, in a very negative frame of mind, but it highlights my feelings about the current mentor program. Please bear in mind, the whole mentor program is a work in progress from the M:EE team perspective, so what I have experienced this year, will not continue (I hope) into next year, and they do have changes coming that I think will improve it, but I still think there is plenty of room for more edu-focused teachers to get involved, and I know this is something that is actually wanted by the M:EE team.

I mentioned in my last post why I initially joined the global mentor program; it was to help shape the way Minecraft: Education Edition developed, and from a desire to help others on their journey wherever they may be. This again, is a fairly negative post, so fair warning. Just my opinions and feelings right now.

Instead of being part of a community that is consulted on changes, or asked for suggestions on the next ‘iteration’ I have been helping 'brand new to Minecraft "Trainers"' skill themselves up by asking those in the community who learnt through trial and error, searching YouTube or just plain playing the game, using their own time to do so. These "trainers" are using the freely shared skills and knowledge of the community to bolster their training, and their paycheck. Look back at my previous post, where I talk about the time I am going to have to spend trialing multiple circumstances to determine what impact the global /wb change has on maps. This is a perfect example of the time I will freely give, and they will gladly benefit from. I am not sure how I feel about this if I am being honest, I want to help teachers use this in their classrooms, and at its most basic level, helping trainers, is in fact helping teachers, but it does feel like the community is being 'used' by these trainers, as they seem to give little back in return for the knowledge they are given.

We are not a consulted community, changes happen without any indication they are coming. We may, or may not get access to early betas to explore, of which I cannot normally partake in, because I work with too many schools and teachers running the current version, and normally they are not backwards compatible, and they are certainly not able to be installed side by side.

One of my biggest issues with the community as it stands, is any attempts to push people in the community to think deeper about the pedagogy instead of the 'shiny' and 'new' and 'engaging' aspects of Minecraft: Education Edition has fallen on mostly deaf ears. I think this is because a fairly large portion of the members are not teachers, but are trainers instead, but this is only a guess. I have been continuing to push my own thinking, sharing it as I go, and there is beginning to be a community of teachers who are exploring deeper, so this can only get better.

I spoke to Meenoo Rami, manager of the program about my feelings when she was in Melbourne a few weeks ago, I said "The mentor community is broken." her response, and rightfully so, was "No, it isn't, it just isn't providing you what you need." So, fair call, what do I need from the global mentor community?

At this point, what I need, most of all, is to be a part of a community of practitioners with whom I can push boundaries, discuss options, create amazing content and share the knowledge and resources freely. What I want from the community aligns, but is also a bit separate from that. I want to be part of a community that shapes Minecraft: Education Edition, a part of a community that pushes it beyond the current boundaries, a part of a community that supports one another freely and openly to grow the great possibilities I see Minecraft in classrooms creating. But instead, currently I get very little, I gain the relationships with other teachers willing to engage with me, but overall I feel a bit 'underutilized'. I give everything for free to the community, and instead of utilizing that skill and knowledge, I feel it is ignored, and they promote 'mentors' that are not actually part of the community at all.

They shone shining lights on two alleged mentors at Minecon Earth, neither of which has ever answered a question in the mentor Teams space, never engaged in a discussion and not been a part of the mentor community these last 12 months (and possibly longer). If you are going to promote the mentor program, at least choose some active mentors, not those who have taken the ‘badge’ and run away with it to promote themselves.

One of the maps demonstrated at Minecon Earth, is not available for anyone to use at the moment, and if history is anything to go by, it will not be made available for the good of the community, but will instead have a price tag attached, whether Microsoft pays this price tag or not is kind of irrelevant. I think the mentors should be producing content for the community, it is a volunteer program after all, if you don't have time, or the desire to share freely, don't join the mentor program.

In fact, one of these same ‘mentors’ told me I was ‘mistaken’ on social media when I made mention that the resources they have created are not freely available. I was happy to be proven wrong, but unfortunately I wasn't. Two weeks later, after I finally managed to get around the ducking and weaving and get a final answer on the question, I was told, in private, that those resources were not available for me to use.

Microsoft continue to promote the 'pretty' and the 'catchy' instead of the deep and meaningful learning that they should be. It appears that the focus is on new teachers, but it is not just new teachers out there, and new teachers at some stage stop being new teachers. It is not going to be long, before school administrators ask teachers using this in their classroom for evidence that it is supporting students to reach curriculum outcomes. If teachers cannot back up their use with solid evidence, they are going to get told they are no longer able to use it.

In my opinion promoting things like social and emotional learning is great, but it needs to be alongside curriculum linked, solid learning outcomes. Minecraft, in my classroom, was never, and in my opinion probably should never be, about ‘only’ the extras. I expect the same all of the teachers I work with, it is always about the learning outcomes, and the ‘other stuff’ is a solid bonus and make no mistake, those bonuses are amazing and well and truly worth it.

All the 4C’s, the social emotional learning, #SDGs and #TeachingTheToughStuff, awesome, and definitely something that that has value, but until the curriculum is shaped differently (a hope and dream at the moment) we are still, as teachers, accountable for the outcomes, and reporting of our local educational systems, and as such, I think we should put our focus there and use Minecraft to make the learning more valuable for students as best we can, within the curriculum we are bound to.

So, what am I saying? I don't know, if I am honest. I don't know what the future holds for Minecraft in education, but I can tell you, that if this debacle continues to grow at the scale and rate it has, I fear we will have lost the greatest opportunity to shift the educational paradigm away from what has been 'traditional' teaching for a world that it is no longer relevant to. There will be a saturation of 'shiny' and 'pretty' surface activities, with no real learning outcomes, and the deep learning lessons will be too hard to find, and even harder to get implemented in classrooms. Or, one of my biggest fears, the valuable, deep learning content will be behind pay walls, making it harder to fund in schools, harder to run, and more difficult for teachers to prove the worth of Minecraft in their classroom early on so they get the flexibility later to push a bit outside the 'norm' and start the change at the ground level.

Information is no longer the key, the ability to decode, decipher, and look at the massive amounts of information available to us and use it in unique ways to solve problems is the key to unlocking potential futures for our students. At this point we are still accountable to outcomes, and in the future I hope that we will be able to be much more flexible in the ‘what’ we teach and assess. Until we actually get there though, using Minecraft to cover only ‘non-curricular’ learning is a very dangerous place to be, and is risking the platform becoming useless in the eyes of administrators before it has a chance to shine.

I will remain a part of the global mentor program, if they continue to let me do so after these last two posts, as I still think I have a lot to offer the community, the community could also offer a lot for me, and I would still like the opportunity to share and shape the product as it develops. However my disappointment in what it has become this last 12 months remains. The mentor program, from my perspective right now is mostly a ‘publicity machine’ for Microsoft, and an ‘echo chamber’ of ‘pretty’ and ‘shiny’ activities that are not curriculum based. There is little discussion about the pedagogy, there is little discussion that takes Minecraft beyond its most basic of uses as a replacement of a worksheet, and I find this a massive missed opportunity, and one of the things I wanted the most out of the program, a community of like minded individuals, all supporting one another to better their practice.

So, if you are a teacher that is interested in growing your own, or others practice in this space, please consider joining, and making the community one that is focused on practice, pedagogy and curriculum alignment as well as pushing the educational uses of Minecraft (and games generally) in education. Leave a comment below, or reach out on Twitter @EduElfie and I will make sure to let you know what the process for application is once they make that information public. Thanks as always for reading, hopefully some more success stories coming up soon, I do have a lot despite my recent negativity, and a few draft posts that are much more positive than this, so stay tuned!

A Terrible Week

This, this may never see the light of the public eye, if it does, well, take this as the rantings of a very frustrated individual after 10+ days of issues, lacking communication, and changes to a whole platform for the sake of one map. I should also note, these are most definitely my own opinions, as they have always been on this blog, and are not the opinions of my employer. I am stating this at this time, because this is a very negative post, and I haven't had one this negative in a very long time, or ever.

Let's start with the issues, around 10 days ago Microsoft released 1.7.0 of Minecraft: Education Edition. Awesome, 1.7 means we have the same codebase as Bedrock 1.7, which means scoreboards are finally here, limited, but here in a useful capacity for most of what I used to do in MinecraftEdu and what I would want to do in my maps now. Great right? For anyone outside of a 'proxy' network, yep, fantastic. Unfortunately every single one of the schools, teachers and students I work with is behind a proxy network. So what does this mean?

Nobody can use it at school. Teachers who I have been working with, had put hours into developing lessons, and worlds to go alongside them, but can no longer use it in their classrooms. This highlights the massive issues of 'automatic updates' of software like this, but putting that aside, the first indication of an issue was from a mentor, in the mentor community asking others if they were seeing similar issues. It wasn't long before I started getting emails and calls from my own schools and teachers here asking what was going on.

The only update I could get was 'We know about the issue, we are working on 1.7.1 which will fix the issue and expect it to be 24-48 hours for a fix.' So this is what I told all my teachers, hopefully a fix will be available in a couple of days. Fast forward a week, and there is still no fix, so I ask around and get told that it is 'in certification' which apparently means it is 'ready' to go to the Microsoft Store, but is going through checks and such before it is available, this should take a couple of hours, but in the mean time it is available as a manual download on the MEE website.

Brilliant, I run off and tell all my teachers that the 'auto-fix' should be available in a couple of hours, but if they are desperate they can manually update. About a day or so later, it actually hits the Microsoft Store. I was waiting patiently for the same release on iOS, but it has never come. My request for timelines and updates fall on deaf ears. I found out a day or so ago that they have not released it for Mac either, which means, only Windows 10 devices are now able to be used for Minecraft: Education Edition in our school networks here. Sorry to those classes, and I know some, in fact I am supposed to be working in one next week, who have a mix of devices, you are fresh out of luck.

Now to the changes, there is one major one which I don't understand, and when asked for clarification I was told the change was made for the streamlining of one particular map. My frustrations were at boiling point already with the issues we are seeing here locally, dampening on the great traction and growth in use we were seeing, but this was astounding to me. Change the whole platform, for one map? Ludicrous!

Now, every individual starting or joining a world doesn't have 'world builder' permissions. Now, I am going to be honest here, we spent at least the first 6 months of this year trying to solve issues within the mentor community, and I would say that at least 60% of the issues were based on 'world builder' permission. We have tried to nail down who gets what permissions in what circumstances and there is no documentation, and no clear communication (yet again).

Now, I need to go through and test as many circumstances as I can, to try and figure out who can do what, and when. I managed to type /wb without issue in another teachers map, are students able to do this in a teacher hosted world, what about in student hosted worlds? All of these have serious impacts on the way I set up worlds for others to use, massive, and also a large impact on teachers 'processes' when working in classrooms with students, and how students work in groups.

Not only that, the map they are streamlining the whole product around, using one of my previous publicly available videos and instructions, would have taken someone less than 5 minutes to fix the issue that changing the whole platform is for. I even would have done it for them, but instead of using the expertise they have in the community they built, or even discussing the implications with the mentors, they just make a global permission change, which means that every single user, even in single player that wants to place a slate, board, poster or NPC needs to type /wb first. Can you see how this might impact if students are not able to do this in a teacher hosted (or fellow student hosted) world, and they are trying to put down boards so that they can demonstrate the learning they have done, or write about the build they created?

I don't want this all to be negative, so one of the brilliant things they did with this update was bring Code Connection (and rename it to Code Builder) into the game itself. Absolutely amazing, streamlines the whole process, works seamlessly from my experience. However, instead of (and this is relevant given they want people to type /wb) typing /code to start it, all you have to do now is press 'c'. In theory, a good move, but in practice a complete pain. Accidental 'c' presses are rife, I have done it multiple times since updating, and this brings the agent right into the game, where you are standing. So you cannot build where he is, or do anything in that block unless you remove him from the game.

So how do you get rid of him? Use a /kill @c command of course! See the inconsistency here? It is too hard to use some commands like /code, but /wb and /kill are commands all users are expected to be able to use, students and teachers.

I said this would be a rant, and I think I am definitely living up to that warning, however this is the reality of Minecraft: Education Edition right now. Changes for the sake of changes, without consultation of the community of experts in Minecraft and education that they created. I joined the global mentor program so that I could help shape the way the program develops and support growth of the global community, and I am not feeling any of that right now. Before I go off on that tangent, my full opinions on the global mentor community deserve their own post, so look forward to that in the next couple of days.

As always, if you managed to wade through that slab of text and negativity, thanks for reading, if you have any comments, or thoughts, please feel free to share them below.

EDIT: I have since been contacted by the M:EE Team, and they were not aware that devices other than Windows were having issues. This has highlighted the need for me to be clearer in my communications with the team as a mentor, and also that I need to get the teachers I work with to submit support requests of their own, rather than all of us expecting them to know there are issues. So, if you are still having log in issues, please file a support ticket here: https://minecrafteducation.zendesk.com/hc/en-us 

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:

OK. I have set aside today to design, build & publish a standards linked and outcomes centred resource for #ELA teachers using #MinecraftEdu. I will be Tweeting the whole process as I go on this thread. Feel free to post any ideas/feedback as we go. @CrossPondLtd @PlayCraftLearn

— Simon Baddeley (@SimBadd64) October 27, 2018

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.

Students will:
Interpret information presented in different formats
Make inferences based on contextual knowledge of other perspectives within the narrative
Compare & contrast different viewpoints & use them to inform a final deduction#MinecraftEDU @PlayCraftLearn @CrossPondLtd

— Simon Baddeley (@SimBadd64) October 27, 2018

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 into MCEdit to import the schematic and make it usable. I need to open it up and get inside to fit the next part of the build #MinecraftEdu @PlayCraftLearn @CrossPondLtd pic.twitter.com/5p34fNRhfW

— Simon Baddeley (@SimBadd64) October 27, 2018

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.

This is only the second time I have actually opened #Minecraft all day. Quick check to make sure the dimensions will work then on with the upper pumpkin. #MinecraftEDU @PlayCraftLearn @CrossPondLtd pic.twitter.com/vADxvvO4C8

— Simon Baddeley (@SimBadd64) October 27, 2018

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.

Here is the thread to pick up where stage one finishes. @BenSpieldenner will be taking up the baton and adding custom NPCs next. Follow along here:https://t.co/cBYSHStV25

— Simon Baddeley (@SimBadd64) October 27, 2018

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.'

I need only copy the resources I want to change (here it is the textures for certain entities), the manifest.json file, and the pack_icon.png...next the fun begins....creativity and editing. Keep in mind these are for a Halloween narrative. @PlayCraftLearn @CrossPondLtd pic.twitter.com/hgPjNxXQbU

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 27, 2018

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.

Now to the customizing....my goal for this NPC is to make it a farmer. I am thinking overalls and such. #MinecraftEdu @PlayCraftLearn @CrossPondLtd pic.twitter.com/2W3Tc8mXjD

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 27, 2018

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!

Before I finish customizing NPCs, I am going to start the narrative piece with NPCs. I need to figure out how many and which NPCs to customize. The narrative connection is what is most important...the NPC skins come second to the learning. @CrossPondLtd @PlayCraftLearn pic.twitter.com/WD3fHnrPbo

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 29, 2018

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.

Using @googledocs we planned each NPC before placing them in the world. Now we have to create NPC skins that will give more meaning to the narrative. @CrossPondLtd @PlayCraftLearn pic.twitter.com/eSbfwplBYc

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 29, 2018

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.

Instead of 9 I opted for four skins (three below)...time constraints versus need drove me to shrink my vision. Now, we have to prep the world for export and include the resource pack. Then comes writing the lesson plan for teachers. @CrossPondLtd @PlayCraftLearn #MinecraftEdu pic.twitter.com/SwQ72xPahm

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 30, 2018

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.

This allows me to see what block types, and how many of each are in the whole map. More importantly, what blocks AREN'T in the map already that I can use to help me trigger my command blocks without interfering 'later' in the narrative. @PlayCraftLearn #MinecraftEdu

— Stephen Elford (@EduElfie) October 30, 2018

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.

Always test it works. Activate the command block with a redstone block, and go stand at the spawn location. We have success here! When I am 4 blocks above a brown concrete block, world builder ability is removed from me. No more accidentally breaking NPCs in @PlayCraftLearn pic.twitter.com/kg5UHVoNUK

— Stephen Elford (@EduElfie) October 30, 2018

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.

Only a couple of things left. Make sure that players are in survival and then teleport them into the middle of "Pumpkin Town" (not the official name, just mine!!) Wondering whether I can teleport students as they take a 'leap of faith' I feel a need to explore, but gamemode 1st.

— Stephen Elford (@EduElfie) October 30, 2018

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.

Just because we can, doesn't mean we should! I am sure someone famous said that, and it really applies quite nicely here. The risk is too great, I am still going to see if I can do it, but wont be using it in this map. Sorry @CrossPondLtd you don't get this cool addition today!

— Stephen Elford (@EduElfie) October 30, 2018

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.

It still isn't @CrossPondLtd pretty, but it is far less intrusive now. New players spawn at the start of the arrow, get /wb removed from them, set to survival, walking forward, they get given a camera, portfolio and book to record learning, at the point, they get tp'd to town. pic.twitter.com/b2oIjqxPnx

— Stephen Elford (@EduElfie) October 30, 2018

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.

Finishing up the world! Over the last two hours @SimBadd64 and I have tossed the world back & forth both proofreading & testing. Thanks @trishcloud for ideas of fun surprises for kids in the world. @PlayCraftLearn @CrossPondLtd https://t.co/ZdqFS98v0h

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 30, 2018

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!

The Mystery of Pumpkin Town is now live! @SimBadd64 and I have live tweeted the entire process and had a blast...thank you to @EduElfie @trishcloud for their help. Here it is...an inference lesson just in time for Halloween! @PlayCraftLearn #MinecraftEdu https://t.co/0tGXVAFW5d

— Ben Spieldenner (@BenSpieldenner) October 30, 2018

The Mystery of Pumpkin Town is out now!! We've shared every stage of the production process and can finally bring this to you in time for Halloween. Learning the difficult skills of inference & deduction in #MinecraftEdu @CrossPondLtd @PlayCraftLearn https://t.co/vQN7kRJ92v pic.twitter.com/kSwC2WLM09

— Simon Baddeley (@SimBadd64) October 30, 2018

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.

AWESOME New #MinecraftEDU Resource from @BenSpieldenner @SimBadd64 of @CrossPondLtd and guest starring the abilities of @EduElfie too! The Mystery of Pumpkin Town is ready! Check out my fast intro video here. #Timely #EdTech @PlayCraftLearn @MicrosoftEduCA https://t.co/gTI7fWwbD8 pic.twitter.com/tIIqlejko6

— Benjamin Kelly 🇨🇦 (@BBTNB) October 30, 2018

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!

A Week of Implementation

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.

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.

Let's Not Ruin Minecraft Huh?

I feel like all I am doing lately is complaining about the resources and information that is out there and available to teachers, and todays post is not feeling any different. It is however a core part of my job now, and I, more details further down, have finally realised why I am so darn passionate about not only my job but Minecraft in education globally.

I have, after the previous post had quite a few discussions around the traps with regards to the kinds of resources that teachers need to get started. I am going to try to summarise these conversations here, and then start a new discussion about what is possibly my biggest concern, fear, or worry about this whole Minecraft in education thing.

So, to the discussions about resourcing, some people had a very similar opinion to my own, and since I have already shared that I don't need to rehash it. I will say however that some of my 'key points' are, in reflection, not essential to each and every lesson. Some lessons don't need  maps, others do, some don't need associated worksheets, others do. So, if I think on the kinds of lessons I created, and create now, and that is what most of them need to actually be able to be run by others. Is that a good thing? Who knows, that may be a blog post for another day.

So the more interesting part is others' opinions. Those opinions ranged from, and I am seriously paraphrasing here for simplicity; "All they need is an idea to get started" through to "I provide my resources for free, so whatever I provide is better than nothing." Now these opinions I find very interesting. I understand that I am in a very unique position with the way my role is shaped right now, but I have always believed, to my core, that Minecraft has the possibility to really shift the way education happens around the world. 

I feel like I have always done my best to help teachers see that this is a true opportunity to change education. I always critically reflect on what happens in my class, and try to figure out what was working, and worthwhile, while at the same time, exploring what wasn't working, and what I could have done different (and would do different next time) to make the experience better for the students. I also feel like I have always shared my best work, again, because by sharing what is my best work, others can pick it up, and choose to do what they will with it. While sharing my best work for others to pick up and use, I also have shared the not so great work as examples of what not to do, to help others avoid the same traps, to show them that not everything is perfect, but it is all a part of a development, evolution or journey. This whole blog is a testament to that, raw, warts and all type posts about my lessons and thoughts while developing have been something that I have been, and continue to be, very proud to have my name on.

So while I value all of the discussion, I still think we should be sharing the best resources we can, be they lessons, guides, maps or whatever. At no point did anyone shake me from that belief. An experienced teacher can take a well thought out plan, run it as it is, or alter it to suit their needs. They could just possibly need the idea and no other resources, however, for a beginning teacher, I don't think an idea is enough, particularly for those that have no conceptual understanding of Minecraft. They have no basis to see the implementation in their classroom. I am still surprised that in a training group of 30 teachers, I may only have 1 or 2 that have ever even been 'in' Minecraft prior to coming to the training. A teacher of this experience level will surely benefit from having access to a well thought out lesson plan, and what ever associated resources are needed to make that lesson a success, but they will just as surely suffer if they only have access to ideas, and no idea how that idea works in this platform called Minecraft, let alone in a classroom full of students in Minecraft.

So, this leads onto my next train of thought to try and thrash around, and see what others feel or think about this particular curly problem. Taking it one step further from 'what do teachers need to get started' from a resource perspective, to now 'what sort of examples should be promoted, shared and put forward as great uses of this technology.' I think these are two separate things, but they are certainly not mutually exclusive. This is not from a 'selfish' I want to be noticed and 'patted on the head' for doing a great job perspective, I hope that is clear. This is purely from a 'what is best for the community' standpoint. I am sitting here thinking about the 60 odd thousand teachers I am supposed to support within my role, and let's be honest, I have no chance of getting to all 60k of them even if I had this job for 10 years. With multiple large districts around the world taking up Minecraft: Education Edition licenses with their Office 365 packages and the impending release of M:EE on iPads, there is going to be a massive 'influx' of inexperienced in Minecraft teachers.

So, what are they most likely to do? They are going to research, most likely on the web and social media, what others are doing. Now, this is a great thing, but also a very scary thing. As part of my role, I am producing resources to support teachers, and those resources are (soon to be) available on the web, but the teachers in my state will (and should mind you) cast a wider net, and leave the resources I have created and collated as examples I would say are supportive and easy for beginning and experienced teachers alike to run. 

So why is that scary? I do a lot of trawling on social media to see what is happening in the Minecraft in education community, I see what they are going to come across, and I don't think it is the 'right stuff' to get a teacher on the 'right track.' I had a random thought last night (3am'ish I think) about what it is I want to do, why is this whole Minecraft in education job so important to me. It may have taken me a few years to figure out why I am so darn passionate about it. It is something to the effect of "I don't want to change the way students learn, I want to change the way teachers teach." Kids learn so much through play, I have seen it with my own children, and I saw it happen in my classroom, both in Minecraft, and the other games I used after Minecraft opened my teaching practice to the power of games in classrooms.

So with that 'lens' on today while keeping up to date with the community, I saw so many shared lessons or activities that were, in my opinion, not all that great. It pains me to say that, it truly does, as I have always been of the opinion that everyone has to start somewhere, and that starting is better than not starting. I had so many loud voices when I was starting telling me I was 'doing it wrong' and I am very conscious that I don't want to do the same. This is more about those who are seen as experts sharing what are, in my opinion not great uses of this technology.

It brought this thought to mind; "Just because Minecraft is as flexible as a pencil and paper, doesn't mean we should use it as one." Which is nowhere near grammatically correct, but the concept is there. So, I threw some examples of what I had seen to a few mentors, and asked for their opinion. They replied with the SAMR model, and where those activities sat within that framework. Now this has value, in some respect, but I have also been working with people whose children, when they hear that their parents are going to do 'something' in Minecraft, respond with "You aren't going to ruin Minecraft are you?"

This is where my biggest concern lies, Minecraft has potential as a great teaching tool, platform, game... whatever you want to 'name' it, but only if we don't "break" it for the students. They all have fond memories of the game now, not like when I first started teaching in Minecraft, I didn't have 'players' in my classes in the early days, now everywhere I go, every lesson I teach has players, those that love the game, those that know the game, and those that have played, but don't anymore. There is a 'part' of most students now that has some 'connection' with Minecraft the game.

So how long is it going to take for teachers to "ruin" Minecraft because they are using the students memories, and a game in the classroom, to do activities where Minecraft holds no value over a pencil and paper? Where in some cases, Minecraft is actually worse than a pen and paper. I did it, make no mistake, there were activities that I ran, where the students would have been better off having been a part of a 'traditional' classroom, rather than what I did, but I never used those lessons in that same form again, and never will. I reflected on that lesson or activity, and I figured out what made it no better than a traditional lesson, and I adjusted, tweaked, modified until it aligned with the power that I knew Minecraft had for teaching my students. Over a fair bit of time, and experience in both the platform and the classroom, those lessons and activities didn't keep happening, the majority of my lessons, in my opinion, held value above a traditional classroom.

In light of that, I know everyone is at a different point on their own professional journey, but there is a sticking point for me here. That is, some of those activities I saw today were shared by Global Minecraft Mentors, they were the ones releasing these social posts of activities that they did in Minecraft, where Minecraft was used as a word processor, or a piece of graph paper, with no thought as to making the learning 'more' fun, or 'more' engaging by using Minecraft for what it does best, being a game. It is those whom Microsoft has promoted as mentors, who are using Minecraft as a pencil and paper, not pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Mentors should be pushing boundaries, supporting others to get started, yes, for sure, but themselves working at a level of pedagogy that utilises Minecraft for changing education, not substituting word processors and graph paper.

Alright, so that turned out to be a bit more of a rant than I wanted. If you would like try to thrash some ideas around with me about how we can support new, and experienced Minecraft teachers to not ruin Minecraft, and its potential to change the way education happens, please leave a comment below. Thanks as always for reading my brain dumps, and efforts to try and clarify my own thinking.