Why am I teaching this?

This post has nothing to do with MinecraftEdu or games in education. This post is a reflection and question for those educators out there reading this.

This year I am teaching Year 10 Maths, the general kind, for those students going into the 'lower' level maths at Year 11, in our system this is called General Maths and then in Year 12 students can continue with their Mathematical studies by doing a subject called Further Maths. This is still a subject in which students can achieve quite highly and it is generally not looked upon as "veggie maths" or "dumb maths".

In this Year 10 class I have a student who wants to become a lawyer, now this is a great goal to have, however this student it also blind. Which in itself is not a problem for me, I have been teaching him pretty much each year since he started at our school, so my teaching practice has changed over the time to be less note on board like. Again not a problem.

Our VCE General/Further Maths course may include the topic of Geometry and Trigonometry and I am currently trying to teach this to this student. Things like area, total surface area and volume of both simple and composite shapes. Now I know that he is very likely to need a good understanding of this topic to score highly in his year 12 studies, but he is struggling to 'get' the more advanced composite shape things because of course he cannot 'see' the shapes. He has the shapes 'drawn' for him in a way that allows him to see them but he cannot decode those diagrams and break the composite shapes down into their parts so that he can work out the volume or total surface area.

So one of my issues is this, he is never going to need to do this in real life, as a lawyer, the only thing he needs this for is to 'pass the test' and get started on the journey to becoming said lawyer. So why bother teaching a concept that he is struggling to comprehend and that he is never going to use 'in real life'.

This was a discussion I had with his aide at school just yesterday, and this is where I think my 3D printer is going to help, at least somewhat. I have, using 123D Design, designed all the parts of the questions we have covered about composite shapes in the last few days and am currently printing them off on my printer. It took about 10-15 minutes to get the shapes designed (now that I know a bit about the program) and it is going to take approximately 30 minutes to print them off and about 14g of plastic, for a total material cost of about $1.40.

Now this is great for getting the concept home for this student about these questions, but he is not going to have this 'help' with the shapes he sees for his final exams at the end of Year 12. So am I doing him a service or disservice? I honestly do not know, now I do know that what I am doing is going to help him get the concept for these particular shapes, and is definitely going to clarify for him the discussions we have had and the explanations I have given him, so he is not going to be any worse off for me doing this and only time will tell if it helps him in the long term.

But my real question at the moment is, how much of the teaching we do is aimed at 'passing the test' and how much of what I do is aimed at real life useful 'stuff'? I have a syllabus and a course to get through designed by someone who got paid to make it and who decided (I have no idea how) that these topics are relevant and needed by people to be functioning members of society. So what do I do, continue teaching to the test, or try to teach students how to think? I know what I would prefer, but how do I go about it?

How can I effectively say I don't care if you learn this, what I care about is if you can learn this and how do I assess and report on it? But most importantly right now, how can I help this particular student now so that he can more easily achieve what he wants in the future? Your thoughts, feedback and comments would be greatly appreciated, as would sharing this post with other educators so that I can get a broader opinion on this issue. Thanks.

Hanging Out.

The first Minecraft Teacher Google Hangout happened over the weekend just gone. There were 9 participants in the hangout and more on the MinecraftEdu server that was being hosted by Temple University.

We were in the tutorial world that comes with MinecraftEdu, we had people ranging in ability from beginners to long term users. The Hangout can be viewed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9xClC7TJlGY 

We started with a bit of an explanation from Joel about the creation of the tutorial world. We then did introductions and discussed the new features available in the upcoming release. As the first Hangout I think it went very well. There were NPCs all over the place as people were exploring the Custom NPC mod.

Just after the hangout the new MinecraftEdu snapshot was released, it is still undergoing testing, but if you have purchased MinecraftEdu you can now download it from the members area and begin exploring the new possibilities that this release will give you.

Mathlandia is coming along nicely. It is ready for the first session with students, I am going to run it with the other teachers class on Wednesday and my own class on Thursday and I am super excited to see how it goes. Students hopefully will finish the activity with an hour and then will have about 30 minutes of 'free' time to begin to own the world, and make their house.

I have only built a very small amount of the world, and am hoping that students will want to help me build some more of the quest based buildings that I can add NPCs and activities to. I have not quite figured out how to make it 'self-serve' for the finishing of the quest activity. At this stage a 'supervisor' will need to check their work and then give the students the correct token for quest completion so that they can be rewarded for their work.

The tour and lesson video will be coming soon, so keep an eye on my youtube channel. Thanks for reading.

Mathlandia Update 1

Yesterday I happened to be flooded in and could not get out of my driveway, so I took the opportunity to get really stuck into my Maths world, which I have decided should be called Mathlandia (I know nice and original right?)

So I spent quite a few hours working on the scripting of the main character needed for the first activity and getting my head around the dialogue trees in the Custom NPC mod. Once I had that pretty much down I went and built the actual learning task for the students. It took a few hours but the end result I think is pretty cool, I made a lot of use of the fill tool from MinecraftEdu as well as the copy/paste from WorldEdit.

So basically in here there are 6 repeats of 5 stations, so a total of 30 stations for the students to do their experiments in probability, and then right at the end you can see the final test platform with 6 repeats of the experiment.

Then I got talking to Joel Levin (aka The Minecraft Teacher) and he dropped by, commended me on the curriculum but was very quick to say "can I tweak the build." Now I know Joel's maps always look amazing and while the above screenshot was not going to be the final look I probably can not hold a candle to Joel's creativity and artistic vision, so I let him loose and this is what he did with that section of the map.

I am still in awe! So while he was working on that I was using the in-game NBT edit mod to fill all the dispensers, then adding in the signs I needed, as well as a few more NPC's to help the immersion a bit. Then he shot back to the overworld, and requested to change the wizards tower from this.

To this.

Again, WOW! So apart from a few more small tweaks to make, and the instructions for the activity and setting up the quest properly I am ready to go for next week. I plan on recording a tour shortly to explain the activity and what learning I hope the students to achieve so keep an eye on my YouTube channel for that.

On another front I finally found the time to actually make one of my DNA models that was designed in MinecraftEdu, and I am pretty impressed. I showed the students and they are really keen to make one, so now I have to spend all weekend printing parts to make sure that I have enough. I also need to design a stand for it but that might not be done this weekend as I am still super excited to be involved in the Google+ Hangout with MinecraftEdu teachers from around the world as well as another cool almost top secret 'thing' I must do (more info later I promise).

It is interesting how having something like a case on my iPod that I printed is getting kids interested. Each time a student asks if I can print them one, I say "sure, but it is going to cost you 1 lunchtime a week for up to 6 months." And most are actually interested in helping me build a 3D printer and soon the school will be purchasing an Up Plus printer, I just need to get my act together and order it.

Another interesting side effect of having a 3D printer (and one I knew would happen) is that I am trying to teach myself how to design and how to use the design software to do what I want. I am nowhere near advanced but I am getting by. The software I am using at the moment is 123D Design, it is free and available on the mac and I think I am getting pretty close to being able to print a new phone cover for my phone that I created from scratch. I am going to be prototyping parts this weekend while printing the parts for the DNA model and I am very excited to see how I am going in terms of getting the design onto the computer in the right way.

As always thanks for reading, and if you have any thoughts or comments please leave them below.

Community Growth

Well I am very excited. A long time ago I wrote an excited post about collaborative build servers, they didn't really take off. I think it was probably because the community was not entirely large enough and there were not enough contributors to get it fully operational.

Now however I think that the community has grown enough, and the push has come for a Google+ hangout. Even better the MinecraftEdu community might be getting a server for collaborative connections hosted at Temple University and having this alongside Google Hangouts could create a great place for MinecraftEdu teachers to collaborate, learn and generally chat with other teachers from around the world. The possibilities for global classroom connections are huge, as are the training opportunities for people just beginning to use MinecraftEdu.

So the first hangout is happening this weekend (my time) and I am super excited. We are hoping to use the latest test build of MinecraftEdu including Forge and some of the mods the community would like to experiment with. If you would like to be a part of this you should check out this post on the google group for instructions on how to get on board.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/minecraft-teachers/iegcMl63p_U

My Maths world has almost taken a little bit of shape, I have imported a wizard tower from http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/259190-shop-the-medieval-construction-kit/ as the starting thing and am seriously considering opening up the world for some students to help me build, but I just have not found the time within school hours to do so. I am hoping to have the first activity ready to go by this weekend so I will try to keep the updates coming.

A Game Inside A Game Inside A Game.....

OK so an update on MinecraftEdu and my Year 8 Maths idea. MinecraftEdu now comes with Forge, at  least the latest very test version does, and I am so excited by the possibilities this offers. Having explored just a couple of the mods available to add to the server now my mind is exploding with ideas.

I am 'thinking' constantly about a way to bring the Custom NPCs mod and MystCraft (after a reply to my previous post about my Maths ideas) and I think I would like to try to make my Maths world a game inside a game. So there would be quests, rewards and of course learning along the way.

I probably should explain what I think these two mods do (in my very brief exploration so far) and then I can try to explain how I am going to use this to make my maths world a massive game.

Custom NPC's: I will be able to add computer controlled characters, with specific scripts and items to trade with students. These characters can also deliver quests to students and then reward students for completing the quest.

MystCraft: This adds books that can be used to create and travel to an almost infinite number of different worlds or dimensions (25565 I think). These worlds can be customised in various ways through colour of the sky, clouds and the void, the general biomes available in that world and their size, the weather and light levels. In other words I have the ability to tailor 'new worlds' to look and feel different for the students.

So my basic idea is to get the NPCs to give the students quests to complete in one of the many MystCraft worlds I create, and it is in these worlds where my activities will be placed, rather than in the 'overworld'.

This will mean that students will travel to these other worlds, complete the quests (learning tasks) come back to the villager with the items that complete the quest and then get rewarded in various ways. The rewards may be special blocks to build with, tools, food or pretty much anything that the students need/want in the overworld for building their house/playing Minecraft.

Now this means that I am going to have to give the students time to just play Minecraft, to make them want to complete the quests and get the rewards they need to take ownership of the world. So my plan is to have a year 8 Minecraft lunch (or 2 for the 2 different classes if the other teacher wants to come on board) for a few weeks prior to the first quest.

So the students will have been playing (I know not all might but I will come to that shortly) and have a base set up and 'need' some things to keep moving forward and if I pay the right sort of attention while the students are playing I should be able to tailor the quest rewards accordingly and make the rewards even more rewarding so that students want to complete the quest to get the rewards. (that is a terrible sentence but you get the idea)

So now for the issues, what about those students who don't want to play Minecraft during lunch, or that don't care about the rewards. No ideas here yet, I wont know how many wont want to play until I let them know what is happening, I taught these students last year for Science and I know they like to play Minecraft so I am hoping if I tell them that this world will be theirs and they can play it 'anytime' I open the room for them, they will take ownership and come on board.

As for the quest rewards, I am not sure whether I can have multiple students doing the same quest from the same NPC yet, and I am not sure I can have different rewards for different students (I think not unless I want to intervene and give out rewards, which I am loathe to do, as I hope that students will want to re-do quests in their own time to get more rewards).

So very early planning days for this and I am not sure when the more stable version of MinecraftEdu will be out but I am going to base my plans on this and use the very unstable version to start creating my world to see if this is actually a viable idea. Thanks for reading this 'brain dump' of ideas and feel free to add your comments below.

Augmented Reality.

I managed to get myself an iPod touch 5th gen for my birthday so now I can explore the world of Minecraft Augmented Reality with the Minecraft Reality app on the iTunes store. This app allows you to put pre-built Minecraft structures in specific locations in the real world, where others with the same app can see it. I am hoping to place virtual models around my room and let students explore them with their own iDevice or perhaps even mine. So expect some updates on that in the near future, near being well and truly over a month.

Along the same line last night I managed to get myself an invite to the Niantic Project Beta, which is a Google/Android based virtual game that plays out in the real world with augmented reality. I am very interested in seeing how it plays and trying to figure a way to bring something similar perhaps into my school/classroom. If any of you out there are playing I am one of the Enlightened and am so far a little bit at a loss for what I need to do and how to get to where I need to be.

A quick post today, thanks for reading.

I Am Still Alive.

Happy new year everyone. I am still alive and kicking, still messing around with MinecraftEdu and planning my next year of Minecraft learning lessons. I am going to keep the backstory short as to why I have not posted in ages, but I feel you deserve a bit of an explanation.

My 2 year old daughter broke her leg mid October and my wife was due to give birth to our second child late November. Unfortunately the plaster was on until mid December so I had to take time off work to support my wife with my daughter. I thought things would settle after the plaster came off and while I would most likely not be back at work for 2012 I would have plenty of time to work on planning for 2013 and beta testing the latest MinecraftEdu release. It turns out a 2 year old with a sore leg and a new born baby are what I have taken to calling a 'time sink'. All 'free' time disappears into these two (amazing) little children. Finally things are starting to settle down and I managed to spend some time doing 'stuff' towards MinecraftEdu and planning.

Some really exciting news that @Kulttuuri has blogged about is that ComputerCraft is coming to a Minecraft install near you. On top of this the MinecraftEdu mod is being reworked to become a Forge mod, which for those who are not into the modding of Minecraft means that theoretically MinecraftEdu can be combined with any Forge compatible mod (which for me, excitingly means an in-game NBT editor that will allow me to create custom spawners for my Edventure maps)

So I spent my New Years night (about 5-6 hours of it) modding a Minecraft install with Forge and installing ComputerCraft to get a bit of a headstart and a clearer idea of what capabilities I am going to have access to when it comes to MinecraftEdu and WOW!!! I was hooked.

I watch a fair bit of Minecraft on YouTube when I get time and I have been watching the Mindcrack crew play Feed The Beast and have been really enjoying watching Guude mess with something called Turtles. I figured "I know a little programming language, enough to get me by surely" but let me tell you I am a complete and utter noob. I have done a fair amount of BASIC programming and the LUA language has some similarities but there was a fair bit of reading web tutorials trying to get my turtle to what I wanted it to do.

I have learnt a few neat tricks that I will share through YouTube when I get a chance, and I am super excited about starting a lunchtime Minecraft programming club at school when I go back in about a month and learning alongside the kids.

The real reason I am posting a blog today is that today I managed to find some time to go through the junior maths course I am teaching this year and brainstormed some pretty neat ideas for the various topics being covered and also started fleshing them out and planning them a bit more. I have ideas for most topics over the year, most are simple activities that I think should help students understand the concepts a bit more.

Here is the idea list so far (in order of teaching I think).

• Theoretical vs Experimental Probability
• Venn Diagrams
• Length & Perimeter
• Area
• Volume & Surface Area
• Scale
• Place Value
• Fractions (maybe)
• Positive and Negative Numbers
• The Cartesian Plane
• Sampling/Collecting Data
• Bar & Column Graphs
• Line Graphs
• Simple Algebraic Equations
• Isometric Drawings & Plans
• Nets & Perspective Drawings
• Rotations & Reflections

I will be sharing the full plans and the map with the community but that leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I think I want this to be a persistant "Year 8 Maths World" and I would love even more if I could open this map up to students outside of school hours, there are technical issues that will probably prevent this from happening. But the idea of a Year 8 Maths world in which students could also have time to build and play in is something that intrigues me, giving them ownership of the world but having math learning areas that they could revisit if they wanted at any time. 

This leaves me with some options, I could share the plans and parts of the map separately as I complete the building and people could import them into their own worlds or I could hold off and share the entire map at the end of the year when I have built all the different parts. Of course there is no reason I could not do both and I think this is probably the way I will go, share the parts throughout the year and publish the entire map at the end of the year with everything that the students have built and completed to give them a 'real audience' to build for, but I would like to ask for your opinion. Do you think sharing the individual parts is a good idea? And is sharing the students completed work and buildings appropriate and providing them with an authentic audience?

Well that is a pretty long post, so if you have made it here to the end, thanks so much for taking the time to read and I will try to do more planning and blogging over the coming weeks as well as sharing my findings about ComputerCraft and my maths world builds.