Progress!!

It has been such a long time since I worked on a map of this magnitude, and equally long since I shared screenshots of an incomplete build, but here goes.

The backstory finally fell into place, all the mechanics I wanted in the background to give the students a 'reason' to complete the quest, other than because I suggest it :D. So we are in a post apocalyptic world, where the entire environment is toxic. There are healing 'posts' that prevent those journeying from becoming ill, as long as they do not stray too far from them for too long. There are also emergency 'MedBays' along the way if they get in a pinch and need immediate healing of the effects.

These technologies were left behind by the previous race who abandoned this planet long ago after a long drawn out war with enemies unknown. There is also a teleportation device, if you happen to fall ill (and perhaps die) you can travel back to the island you were just exploring. All of these technologies are linked to the 'central database', where your genetic imprint is stored for teleportation, and to whom you submit your findings and calculations along the way to prove you are worthy of gaining access to and launching the shuttles.

There are custom NPC's along the way to point you in the right direction, as well as offer friendly advice. There are also a slew of command blocks impacting on gameplay and being 'command' who whispers helpful suggestions in your ear and sees what you see through the glasses you were equipped with. Oh and did I mention the hidden treasure you can find along the way that will make your journey safer, as well as perhaps providing you with opportunities to gather even more valuable treasure.

It has taken quite a few hours to get all the background mechanics working as intended, I am finally beginning to build the 'learning activities'. I am using a mod to add a heap more paintings and customising those to suit my needs. As well as utilising custom NPC's to add interactions with the central database, and also for the beginning to lay out the 'guidelines' and teaching them to use the technology they get supplied with from ancient stores.

So, now to the screenshots.

Most of the wool blocks you see are either markers or placeholder blocks that will be replaced when the map is finalised. I think the first lesson will probably be setting the backstory up and going through the tutorial part of this map. I think I may actually need to read some parts to students, or create another video like I did for Gravity Lab to get everything across. I actually feel like doing a bit of story telling, but I don't know whether I can do a good enough job, in a short enough time, so that the students get maximum time towards completing the journey to the shuttles and reviewing their knowledge about the measurement topic along the way.

OK, it has just gone midnight here, and I need to head to bed, but I felt I needed to share the progress I have made. Thanks for reading, I hope you like the look of the map so far and the backstory sounds interesting to you. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

Another Storyline?

I am still in the deep planning stage of the measurement map I want to do in about a week (how unlike me to leave things until the last minute). It turns out that I may be able to have a few hours in this map to help the students review their learning of the measurement topic, which is awesome, because it means I can perhaps get another storyline happening. Kind of like Gravity Lab merged with Path to Percentage Perfection.

So what is the new plan with this map? To review everything we have learnt throughout this topic. A pretty large aim, but I honestly think it is doable. I have added a few mods to give me access to more paintings in-game, as well as a few other items that will be useful. Which means that this will be the first 'heavily' modded map I have made, as in the first that really relies on mods to be successful.

I have made a custom biome/map using WorldPainter, here is what it looks like so far.

It is really going to be interesting to bring my build to life in this map. Basically the students will be going through an 'on the rails' type path, like Percentage Perfection, and will be journalling their review of the topic as they go. The end result however, will be that the students will get their in-game journal printed out for them, which they will then be able to take into their final test for this topic, hopefully stuck in their summary book.

The storyline is 'brewing' slowly, I have some ideas, vague and incoherent, but ideas none the less, that I think could make an interesting story line, and if these students get involved in the story (unlike my Pre-CAL class, and more like the original Gravity Lab group) I think it will be a pretty engaging task for them.

There are a few other reasons I really want this map to shine, the main one being I have not made a really cool map in a very long time with all the other things going on in my life in recent months. I would also really like to share this map with the community as a complete, standalone map, unlike many of my others which are not complete or not fully standalone.

The other major reason is that we (the Math faculty) are going to be showcasing our use of MinecraftEdu in our classes at a parent information night next week, and having a student engaged, learning and able to articulate their learning for the demonstration will go a long way (hopefully) in getting me a bit more flexibility to bring MinecraftEdu back into my classes a bit more and also bring some more students into the school.

Warm and Fuzzy.

This might sound very silly, and has nothing to do with MinecraftEdu but I just had to share something right now. It is nearing 9pm here on a Thursday night before a holiday Friday. Today I finished 3d printing the last pieces for a student project, and jokingly told the student that it was to be put together and I was to be sent photos before now. About 30 minutes ago I got my email and pictures. I will share them right here:

Email Subject: I made it on time
Email contents:

This is a clock, designed from scratch by a student at my school but not as part of any class. So this has all been done outside of class time. This project started close to 7 months ago. The student in question is a very bright young man, and was involved in a project based learning environment with the rest of his year level. I had been trying to get him to design something, anything, for the whole year, finally he decided he would like to design a clock.

GREAT!!! Here is a broken clock, pull it apart, figure out how it works and then design one. The first iteration of the gears was not quite up to scratch, the teeth of the gears would not mesh consistently or smoothly enough from the large to the smaller gears. With that taste of a challenge the student went home and did a bit of a google search, found the information he needed and redesigned all of the gears overnight. I was absolutely blown away by how well the second set of gears I printed meshed together. So I set about printing all the parts he required and today the final pieces were finally printed, there was a long delay due to the summer break and his computer having some issues.

So why do I feel all warm and fuzzy? This student has just taken something from his head, onto the computer, and then had it printed in real life. Now that is a feat, but to have what you can see in those images, for him, has got to be a pretty amazing feeling. I know I felt like I could conquer the world when my designs were finally complete, from the DNA model to the Periodic Table and those that I have partially completed since. It is a very interesting feeling to have something you created from scratch in your possession, something that came out of your head and is now in your hand.

This student has just been exposed to this same feeling, and I hope it is like a drug for him. His first design project was this, his second is to either alter the train set I designed for my daughter so that we can have an engine that is remote controlled from an old toy helicopter and its parts, or to design a remote control car from those same parts or to do something else that he is more interested in. I hope that the feeling he has right now, looking at his almost complete clock, drives him to continue designing contraptions that I will readily print 2 copies of, 1 for him and 1 for the school.

So where to from here? Once this model is completed and is working as intended we will sit down and work out an 'educational' version of this clock, where the hands, and all gears associated with those hands will be printed in a different colour, what a way to teach about gearing and ratios. I would also like to see him offer the design on the web, and if he is feeling entrepreneurial, selling the clock online, either the plain, or educational version.

OK enough babbling, thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.

Finally Reconnecting With the World.

I have been awfully quiet so far this year, I am very limited in my MinecraftEdu class time this year, much more so than last year. The main reason I have been out of action though, in terms of my blog, is because I have been disconnected from the digital world at home for nearly 5 weeks. So for about 2 weeks prior to heading to Austin for sxswedu until a few weeks ago I had no internet, or very limited internet, at the places I have been living.

I am finally moved into my new house, still a lot of boxes to unpack, painting and general maintenance things to be done, but the internet was finally connected properly a couple of weeks ago. So I am finally feeling reconnected with the world. It was an interesting experience having to disconnect when I left work every day and not having access at nights or on the weekend. You would think this would mean I would have a whole heap of time to make maps….. but unfortunately this has not been the case. The new house has required a bit of rearranging of walls, trees and taps, which has been enough to keep me extremely busy when I get home.

Now that I am connected again, I have just had 2 weeks holidays from teaching. I have a plan for a lesson soon… I always have a plan. I am going to 'merge' the 2nd and 3rd quests from Mathlandia last year into one map, and by merge I mean I am going to 'throw' those maps out the window and start fresh with a blend of adventure and quest based map activities. I will include building activities and also a few ECAAS (those question things in the Path to Percentage Perfection) where students can explore and consolidate their understanding of area, perimeter, surface area and volume of the various shapes we have talked about and also show their understanding.

I had a great idea for getting students to explore the area of a circle, including mechanics to get the students to estimate the area, receive the number of blocks they estimate, fill in the circle and report back on how accurate their estimate was and then get points based on how accurate their estimate was that they could put towards a prize at the end of the task. Now while I think this is an amazing idea, and will probably build the mechanics just to prove to myself that I can do what I thought I could, I think it will take too much of the limited time I have to incorporate MinecraftEdu into my class this year to complete the activity in class.

So why spend the time building it? I think the mechanics might be useful for other things too, especially the teleport mechanics that determines the station to teleport students to based on which ones are available. I might also set it as a homework task for students who are interested, based in vanilla Minecraft rather than MinecraftEdu of course. I cannot wait until my new study is complete and I can get really stuck back into the 3d printing and map making that I am really beginning to miss now.

That is really all I have for now, I will hopefully do some more posting as the new map comes along and give updates on the progress of the building. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.

A Wild Ride.

Ok, so I am leaving Texas tomorrow morning (ridiculously early) and what an amazing adventure this trip has been. The presentation was mind blowing, we had people lining up out of the door trying to get in, they were turning people away after they jammed as many people into the room that they could. Apparently people were turned away, went for a wander around to see if there was anything else that intrigued them, then came back and took their chances in the line.

The presentation itself was great, we had mostly teachers, about 100 of them if my crowd counting was right, with 30 laptops all running MinecraftEdu. The people that attended, at least the majority, were complete beginners, had heard of Minecraft, either from students or their own children, but never set foot in the game. After a very quick 30 minute rundown by Joel and myself on what it was, what it looks like, what is possible we let them loose in the tutorial world.

With around 8 helpers roaming the room offering support where needed and answering questions things went so smoothly, if someone was stuck for more than about 2-3minutes I would be surprised. What I found very interesting, although I should have expected it, was the noise, exactly the same as a normal MinecraftEdu classroom, solid working noise, collaboration, discussion, sharing and supporting each other. So after letting them learn how to play we changed the maps available to my Animal Cell map, and the World of Humanities map. I really wanted to show the Animal Cell map because it demonstrates very clearly how different the game can look from what is default, and also the curriculum is very clear, easy to see, as it is with WoH.

I honestly believe that every teacher in that room walked away with at least some idea of how to play Minecraft, and some real good food for thought as to what is possible. There were questions from all over asking about implementation, lesson building, specific subject suggestions, it was crazy. There has been an article written about our presentation here. Our session was also recorded, audio only, for a podcast, and when/if that gets released I will share also.

Thanks for reading, and a big thanks to all those who attended or supported us in the session.

Hello From Texas.

Well, it is 4am local time in Texas, and 9pm tomorrow at home and I, of course, am wide awake. So here I sit, in my hotel room in Austin, Texas with less than 5 hours before I take to the stage with Joel Levin (aka The Minecraft Teacher) to talk to teachers about MinecraftEdu in their classes. So I should be asleep, I think I have slept a total of 10 or so hours over the last 3 days, but I am just too excited. I just went through my final checks of the maps we are getting the teachers to join tomorrow to make sure they are working.

Meeting, in real life, the people I have been working with for the last 2 and a half years has been an experience. Having never been out of Australia before, even getting 'off that rock' as Shane would say has been an experience. It is certainly different to be the one that sounds weird, I am normally the one laughing at the accents of others, instead I have people laughing at me. Which of course is par for the course, I would expect no less, just an interesting point.

This post is going to be pretty much useless in terms of Minecraft/Education content, so feel free to stop reading now, it is basically going to be a brain dump of some of the things I have noticed on this trip so far. America is just different, apart from driving on the wrong side of the car, and the wrong side of the road, which I have got to say freaks me out every time we turn a corner as there are cars where I think we should be going. There are just some other minor differences, some of which I managed to put my finger on yesterday that just make it feel different to home.

The colours of the houses is 'wrong' now this might seem silly, but never before had I really thought that the colour of the houses would be something that would just make me feel like I was not at home. The colours of the rocks and bricks used to make the houses here lacks the 'red' of Australia, it is all browns here, no real red bricks at all. The reason I am mentioning this is because it had really never crossed my mind that the materials around you, particularly the materials for buildings, are 'local' and that they have a local flavour to them, that when missing, is noticeable.

The other thing that I pinpointed that made me feel like I was not home was the trees, the leaves are not the colours (again with the colour) or shape that they should be. I say 'should be' like where I grew up is what every place should look like, again just something I had not considered before. The trees have a different look about them that just makes them odd to me. A little perspective can go a long way, I am enjoying myself greatly and am really looking forward to sharing a bit of Aussie slang with the group I am working with in the morning.

Ok, enough blabbering, back to bed for a couple of hours more sleep if I can manage it, if you did make it this far, thanks for reading.

Updates on KerbalEdu and Mathlandia.

I got a hold of the first (as in very first) pre-alpha release of KerbalEdu the other night. WOW, it is going to make it so much easier to get information out of the game to help the teaching of 'rocket science', and this is only the beginning. You can read the official blog of KerbalEdu here: (kerbaledu.blogspot.com) but I will say that both the 'troubleshooter' and the extra information you can get about your rocket as you build it are amazing. They should also help students get past many of the issues I saw in getting rockets/planes airborne so that, at least in my class, I can teach them about the forces involved, even to the point of getting into space and removing 'gravity' from the equation, which without spending a heap of time in class, that I could not afford, would not happen.

Mathlandia, oh dear!!! The students were not enthusiastic at all when I threw the idea out there about using Minecraft to help their learning and having a server to play on outside of school. So instead of working on the map as a whole, I have decided to break the map apart, make each lesson a standalone map. There are 2 reasons I am choosing to do this;

1) I should have done it from the start so it was easier for other educators to use/tweak.

2) This way, since these students don't want a substantive world to 'play' in I can just keep each as a standalone lesson and not worry about any of the other server issues I was worried about.

So what now? The first lesson in Minecraft will be the probability lesson, where we explore the difference between experimental and theoretical probability. I have 'split' all the Mathlandia lessons out of Mathlandia, and am in the process of making the adjustments they need from running them last year. The advantage, I guess, of the students not wanting a consistent world is that I need not worry about 'rewards' so much in the game, which makes the submission of work so much easier. I still remember that horrible time I had checking each students' work as they wanted to get their ruby so that they could go back to the main world and get paid for their work.

A short update today, thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment or suggestion below.