Plans, Problems and New Plans.

Why is it that that the best laid plans always run into problems. I had it worked out perfectly. I was going to teach the kids the basics of Minecraft during the lesson on Monday, then on Tuesday they were going to go through my 21 question quiz map to find the address of the free build server and then invest some time in creating a place in the free build area. My plan was to get the kids invested in the free build server so that they would want to go through the teaching phase of the lesson to get to the free build.

The original problem of no licenses is fixed but there are new problems. Number one problem is that I am not going to be in class on Tuesday for our double lesson, so there is one and a half hours that I wont be there to work with MinecraftEdu in the classroom. I have to head to a 2 day conference in Melbourne. I also will probably not have internet access at the conference so I wont be able to supervise them in the world of Minecraft either.

The next problem is what do I do now. Do I still spend Monday teaching them the basics of Minecraft, or do I hold out another week, after promising them it would be happening this week?

And the new plan. Quite simple really, I have created a new survival world, almost free build. The catch is there is limited space and limited resources. I think that there are only about 4 or 5 trees in the area that the kids can access. I have done a little bit of exploring and found that there is coal and iron quite close to the surface to get them started. I have also added a chest with a few tools and other necessities to get them on their way, but not enough of any one tool to supply all of the students, so they are going to have to assign jobs to individuals. So while they will be creating a server that I hope they want to be involved in, they will also need to work together as a team.

I did consider assigning the 21 question map on Tuesday when I am not there, but there are two reasons I feel that it is a bad idea. First is that it is untested, if things go wrong I would like to be there to fix it on the fly. Second is that I have put a lot of hours into creating the map, and I would also like to be there to see how it goes.

So the plan for Tuesday? Well I am not sure yet, I think I will have to wait and see how Monday goes and how much the students get done. Or I might save the collaborative survival world for Tuesday and teach them how to survive on Monday.

And as normal here are the latest screenshots of the question map, it is getting closer to ready.

The third rooms are all complete, so is one of the fourth. It is not getting quicker, but I am finding a rhythm that makes it easier.

Just showing the amount of redstone going into the wiring.

This just shows how big the build is going to be. I have mapped out the foundations of one set of paths.

Progress has been made!!!!

Well after spending almost 2 hours with the technician today, we finally have the school server accessible from the outside world, so I will not have to worry about taking a copy of the world home each night if I want to work on it.

We have also made progress on the graphical glitches we were having on the school computers, it was a graphics driver issue, updated to the latest drivers on one computer to test, and works perfectly now, no flickering and the text is readable, glass is clear and redstone is not black anymore. So if anybody is having these graphics glitches I highly recommend an upgrade to the latest graphics drivers. All that is needed now is for the technician to do a room wide install of the updated graphics drivers and we will be all set.

The progress on the map is slow, but steady. I have finished 15 of the 25 second rooms. I have also been in contact with the developers about an easier way to put the questions into the rooms, and I think we are close to an easier solution than walking down 25 paths doing each individually. Unfortunately anybody using this map will have to walk down 25 paths and adjust the redstone wiring so that it points to the correct answer, I cannot think of any way around this, but it shouldn't take too long once you know what you are doing.

I am still waiting on licenses for the kids to use, hopefully I will have them by next Tuesday morning for a run with my year 9 Science class.

Screenshots again, since no-one has said they don't like them, I will keep adding them for a while.

This is the improved starting room, I showed someone today and they said it looks like a school and I should try and build a basketball ring. Thoughts?

 The side of the first two rooms showing the redstone wiring.

The back of the build, as you can see there are 15 rooms done, 10 to go for the second stage, then onto the third rooms with 3 questions in each.

Trial Postponed

Well, my trial of MinecraftEdu with students today was postponed due to licensing issues, the issue being that I did not get licenses for the kids in time. Not to worry, at least it gives me more of a chance to build more maps to use with them, and to fix (hopefully) the graphical glitches that the school computers seem to be having with any version of Minecraft.

The 21 question map is coming along quite well now, I did restart it and made it linear instead of branching, so that makes it much easier to build. I have managed to build the starting area and the first rooms for all 25 student passages. I have also made a start on 5 of the second rooms.

I have had more ideas regarding maps to use with the kids, I am thinking, to bring them together and get them working as a team, of starting a survival server and limiting their resources, mostly space and lumber, and having monsters on and them needing to help each other out to survive and needing to collaborate and decide on the best use of resources. I could also make this a competition between a couple of groups, but I would like the whole class to become more cohesive, they are a bit secular at the moment and I think that starting a competition may just keep the status quo.

Another change that I am thinking is that instead of having the 'free build' world at the end of the 21 question map, I will put a sign there with the port number of the free build world, so that those who get to the end can disconnect from the question map and reconnect to the free build map. I would change this port every time I ran the question map so that the students had to get through the questions before being able to connect to the free build world.

Well I think that sums up the progress so far, I cannot continue to work on the 21 question map tonight, I did some more work on it at school today, and forgot to take a copy of it home with me. I cannot wait until the school server is accessible from home, we are having some trouble forwarding port 25565 through a TMG firewall, by all accounts it should be open but the firewall keeps disconnecting the requests as it is thinking the incoming ip has been spoofed. Yet more work for the technician and I to try and get done.

I probably should buy both my techies a few drinks at the end of the year, with the amount of requests I have gone into them with, and how responsive they are, they have been very supportive of all my little projects.

Time again for screenshots of the build, these were taken prior to todays work, so much more progress has been made. Let me know whether you like seeing the progress or if I am just wasting your time.

 This first one is the 'entrance' area, there are redstone torches to let the kids know which corridors are open. On means open, off means someone is already in that corridor and they need to find another one.

The very beginning of the first room, again these are all done now, but you get the idea. (I hope)

Update on Map 2.

Just thought that I should update everyone on my progress so far on the 20 questions map I am creating. I have absolutely no hope of having it ready by Tuesday to use with my students. I will give you an idea of what it is I am trying to build.

First off the students all spawn in a room with 4 halls leading off it. Each of these halls has 5 other corridors leading off in different directions. Once a student goes down one of these corridors it is sealed off so that no other student can go down the same path. I am hoping this ensures that students are on their own.

The plan is that in the first room the students come across has 1 question that they must get correct to move on. I have built 3 of these rooms, so only 17 to go for the first stage. In the second room for each student there will be 2 questions that they must get correct to open the door. Third room, 3 questions and so on, up till 6 rooms and 6 questions, this totals to 21, not 20 as I was originally planning.

Also I have not figured out a way to open the door when the students get a certain percentage correct, if anybody out there reading this can think of a way to make this work, let me know.

The wiring is quite simple, but very time consuming, my biggest problem at the moment is my own design. It is a bit haphazard at the moment, the rooms are all different, and it is tricky to keep building as they are all very close together.

I am wondering whether to begin again and make the rooms linear instead of branching. So there would be 4 or 5 levels each with 5 corridors, again that get sealed off to prevent multiple students from entering. This would fix two of my problems, the messiness of my current build and getting all of the students to roughly the same area after they have answered their questions as I would like to allow the students some free build time to create a 'town' or some such, and then we could change the questions and keep working on it throughout the rest of the year.

More screenshots in case you were interested.

 The total build at the moment, you can see how much of a rabbit warren it is becoming.

This is one of the rooms, the students must pull the correct lever for the door to open, and pulling all of the levers will result in nothing.

Map 1 Done!!

Well after about 3-4hours of map making last night in creative mode, I have managed to get the first of the two maps I wanted done. This is the 'build a 3D model' map. Instead of two groups I decided it was not too much extra effort to have four, just in case the kids wanted to work in smaller groups. The next thing I need to think about before Tuesday morning is how much time do I give them to complete their construction? I have a feeling I will just have to play it by ear and have the second world hosted on another server so if they have finished their build, they can log out of that server and into the other one.

I had a play around with my ideas for redstone wiring yesterday as well, that is going to be a fair bit trickier than I thought, at this stage I can only get the door to open if the students get 100% correct, while this is workable, it is not really ideal, one suggestion from a colleague was to do it manually for each student. Basically this would be a large amount of work for me, but it is possible. I would need to be flying around all the 'rooms' and have a redstone torch light up when the students get the right answer, and when they get a certain number right I can manually open the door.

I learned a fair bit last night while creating a map, I found that my thoughts regarding the 'build allow' and 'build disallow' blocks was wrong, they only seem to impact the map up from where they are placed, not the entire vertical scope of that block. So I will need to alter that in my tutorial map.

Here are some screenshots of the map I have created, I will upload some shots of the finished builds too.

This first one is the overall picture, you can see the 4 'build' areas as the 4 big green platforms.

This one is the start location, from here the students can choose which platform to head to, but cannot go until a lever is pulled once all students are ready.

I was also having some thoughts as to how I teach the students the basics of the game, do I just throw them in the deep end, or do I open up a free build world and spend 10-15mins teaching them in game? Your thoughts are more than welcome.

MinecraftEdu - The beginning

I was browsing the Minecraft forums over last weekend and saw a post about MinecraftEdu, my first thought was “AWESOME, I have been waiting for something like this to give me the excuse to use this with students.” After a bit of reading I ended up at the website and found that there was a beta test happening. So after a donation and a couple of emails to the developers I managed to get the download links. I could not wait to install it on my computer and have a play.

It has been almost a week since I got my hands on it and I have been very excited by the possibilities. I have made a tutorial map designed to teach teachers how to access the special edu blocks and what they are capable of. I emailed this off to the developers, the poor guy got about 15 emails from me within the space of an hour.

He emailed me back and asked if I would be interested in collaborating on tutorial maps if they host a server. My response was a very quick “YES!!!” In that same email he also asked if I would mind having a look at the translations, as the devs are not native English speakers. Again a quick “yes” but a slightly more nervous one.

So I have come up with a plan that will allow me to use this in a class room, with 20ish students. I have the weekend to build myself a couple of maps, one will be an almost free build map, in which the students will be split into 2 or more groups and will have to build me a 3D model of a human eye, with someone coming in to judge the best model and possibly a prize for the winning group.

The second map will be more about assessing knowledge with a reward to the students who get a certain percentage correct, again this is only a plan in my head, it is nowhere near into practice, I hope I can get it done over the weekend. So the students will each go into a room, maybe in pairs, not sure yet, but in that room will be a series of questions with levers below them to signify the answer they want to give. I am thinking around 10-20 questions with 4 possible answers each about light and how we see it.

With some fancy redstone work I think I can rig up an iron door, or sticky piston secret passage to these levers so that if they get 80% of the answers correct the door will magically open, I think I even have a plan regarding how to stop them from just randomly pulling levers until it opens, but I don’t want to bore you with the redstone wiring plan.

Anyway this was just to get some thoughts down, my first ever blog post, that is visible to the world anyway, and try and track my journey from Minecraft fanatic, to Minecraft teaching fanatic. I may keep you updated over the weekend, but I will most definitely post again after Tuesdays year 9 Science class with my reflections on a lesson doing something I have been trying to think of a way to do for ages.

A great big thanks to the MinecraftEdu team for producing the tool I needed to push my dream into reality.