Sometimes I think I forget that kids will be kids if given the opportunity. The reason I am saying this is because one of my fellow year 7 Humanities teachers took her class into the contour map activity for a second lesson, where the task was to build a mountain from the contour map in the game.
The students she took in are the students I have for Science, so they are Minecraft savvy, and normally very well behaved while in game. So when the teacher said I want to go in, I didn't hesitate, I gave her the teacher password and a quick intro into the tools to teleport herself and students around.
I caught up with her after the lesson and she said she had a lot of trouble with them, they were not listening to her instructions when asked to not to dig tunnels into the mountain and generally being uncooperative. I must say I am a little disappointed in the students, however does the saying "kids will be kids" excuse the behaviour.
I have been very upfront with the students about how what we do in class, while being used to teach them, is also being used to help other teachers see how this can be used in classrooms to make learning more interesting, both at our school and further afield. I feel that they have let me down, as now the teacher in question has, as punishment, decided that she will not use Minecraft in her classes for at least the rest of term, so within 10 minutes of me not being there they have undone a lot of my work in getting other teacher on board.
Now I have this class tomorrow, and I will be having a discussion with the class about what they did, and what it means for them, me and other teachers. So my question to you is, how would you approach this situation? Should I be 'blaming' the students for their poor behaviour, or should I be blaming myself for allowing a fellow teacher to go into a situation where she was not fully equipped, mostly the biggest thing she didn't know about was the 'freeze students' button that caused a big discussion a couple of months ago, but probably could have averted at least some of the continued issue.
Should I also be punishing them for their behaviour in some way, or should I leave it in her class? I feel the need to discuss and explain to the students exactly what they have done, but how far do I take it? A lot of questions, and I would really like to hear some of your opinions on the issues that have arisen.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
What Have I Done.
Well it has been a very long time since I wrote a blog post, and I have been feeling guilty about it for at least a week, but now I have some news to share from my classes. First of all I am so happy with how my contour map activity worked out. After getting through most of the activity with my year 7 class last week I sat down yesterday (a weekend and a day later) and they still knew how to read a contour map.
I drew a contour map, roughly the same shape as the one they ended up creating in Minecraft, on the board and asked the students where they would walk to travel from the bottom to the top. The discussion as to why they chose their particular starting point showed a depth of knowledge that amazed me. Some students were starting at the steepest part, as this gave them the shortest distance to travel, others started on the side that was the least steep, as this would give them the easiest walk. Yet others were starting at a steep part that shallowed out afterwards as they wanted a 'challenge' but once were tired they wanted an easier trip.
I ran this class 3 times, once with each year 7 class, here are some screenshots of the contour maps they created.
With my class later this week we will be heading back into Minecraft to build a mountain from a contour map, the students wanted the contour map on paper, but I think I will build them one in the world as well as their paper copy.
The other great news is that our whole year 7 project on energy efficient houses started today, at least for one class, the others will be starting tomorrow most likely but the students had to research and provide the teacher with a plan of what they were going to add to their house that was going to help conserve energy.
The students had to choose the environment they were going to build in, and some have started to build. In the end we decided that it would be most time efficient if students all built from the same floor plan, but could choose which environment to build in. The aim is not to create an awesome house in Minecraft, but to record a tour explaining how they have accounted for conduction, convection and radiation.
If this works, perhaps in future we will allow them to create their own floor plan, but we are trying for time efficiency here and the teachers felt that allowing them 'free reign' to build any sized house would take away the time we are hoping to gain by virtually creating a model instead of creating a real life model.
Here are some more screenshots of what the students have started building.
As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment below.
I drew a contour map, roughly the same shape as the one they ended up creating in Minecraft, on the board and asked the students where they would walk to travel from the bottom to the top. The discussion as to why they chose their particular starting point showed a depth of knowledge that amazed me. Some students were starting at the steepest part, as this gave them the shortest distance to travel, others started on the side that was the least steep, as this would give them the easiest walk. Yet others were starting at a steep part that shallowed out afterwards as they wanted a 'challenge' but once were tired they wanted an easier trip.
I ran this class 3 times, once with each year 7 class, here are some screenshots of the contour maps they created.
With my class later this week we will be heading back into Minecraft to build a mountain from a contour map, the students wanted the contour map on paper, but I think I will build them one in the world as well as their paper copy.
The other great news is that our whole year 7 project on energy efficient houses started today, at least for one class, the others will be starting tomorrow most likely but the students had to research and provide the teacher with a plan of what they were going to add to their house that was going to help conserve energy.
The students had to choose the environment they were going to build in, and some have started to build. In the end we decided that it would be most time efficient if students all built from the same floor plan, but could choose which environment to build in. The aim is not to create an awesome house in Minecraft, but to record a tour explaining how they have accounted for conduction, convection and radiation.
If this works, perhaps in future we will allow them to create their own floor plan, but we are trying for time efficiency here and the teachers felt that allowing them 'free reign' to build any sized house would take away the time we are hoping to gain by virtually creating a model instead of creating a real life model.
Here are some more screenshots of what the students have started building.
As always, thanks for reading and feel free to comment below.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Beta Testing and Bug Hunting
I have never really been a true beta tester prior to getting involved in MinecraftEdu. I mean I purchased Minecraft while it was in beta, but never reported any bugs. So I might not have a lot of experience to call on but I can tell you working with the developers of MinecraftEdu is an absolutely amazing experience. I get access to what they call 'pre-release' versions to go on a bug hunt and test out new features and make sure everything is running smooth enough for a public release.
For the last 2 nights I have been chatting to the lead developer Aleksi about the lag happening in MinecraftEdu servers, on world start up and also there was a cry for help on the Minecraft Teachers Google Group about a map that was having huge lag issues in a particular area of the map. So Aleksi and I were both flying around the map on our respective servers suffering from a large amount of lag trying to work out the source. I was clearing edu specific blocks to see if that was the issue, as loading the same map in a vanilla Minecraft server caused no lag, so it was definitely specific to the edu version.
Anyway after about 4 hours of testing I went to bed, and since Aleksi is in Finland and it was day he kept working. I woke up this morning to the wonderful news that he had found the source of the problem and had fixed it, it was simply that the edu server was calling the 'sign' file almost constantly. So, with my very limited understanding, Aleksi made the server put the sign file into memory instead of pulling it off the disk, that has sped up the server markedly. The reason it was causing lag in this particular region of the map is because there were "seats" everywhere, which if you are a minecrafter you will know, have signs as the arms.
Now tonight we have been trying to work out where the lag is coming from when you start an edu server. Using the same settings vanilla Minecraft was generating a new world in around 15 seconds, while the same map was generating in 50 seconds if you did it in edu, this is different on every server of course, but those were the times on mine. After several hours of messing around, again nothing can be attributed to me, Aleksi has found the issue and has fixed it, so now vanilla and edu generate the world in the same amount of time. He is about to give me the new version to test out for myself and I am amazed at his coding prowess and bug squishing skills.
The reason I am writing this post is to acknowledge, again with my limited experience, the amount of work that the development team producing MinecraftEdu put into creating a stable, bug free build for public release. I don't think that I would have got the same response from the developers of Minecraft when it was in beta stage, perhaps because so many people were testing it. A massive hat tip to Aleksi for listening when we say "this isn't working" or "this doesn't do what it is supposed to" and actually spending so much of his time not only fixing and altering things based on our feedback, but also for chatting and explaining to me what he is doing while fixing issues.
I really appreciate it, and thought that I should let the MinecraftEdu community know that Aleksi (who I am currently calling the 'code king') does listen to feedback, acts on it and uses it to create a better product for you. So if you are having issues with MinecraftEdu let us know via the google group linked above, request membership if you have not already and join us in our discussions about using MinecraftEdu (or Minecraft) in schools.
For the last 2 nights I have been chatting to the lead developer Aleksi about the lag happening in MinecraftEdu servers, on world start up and also there was a cry for help on the Minecraft Teachers Google Group about a map that was having huge lag issues in a particular area of the map. So Aleksi and I were both flying around the map on our respective servers suffering from a large amount of lag trying to work out the source. I was clearing edu specific blocks to see if that was the issue, as loading the same map in a vanilla Minecraft server caused no lag, so it was definitely specific to the edu version.
Anyway after about 4 hours of testing I went to bed, and since Aleksi is in Finland and it was day he kept working. I woke up this morning to the wonderful news that he had found the source of the problem and had fixed it, it was simply that the edu server was calling the 'sign' file almost constantly. So, with my very limited understanding, Aleksi made the server put the sign file into memory instead of pulling it off the disk, that has sped up the server markedly. The reason it was causing lag in this particular region of the map is because there were "seats" everywhere, which if you are a minecrafter you will know, have signs as the arms.
Now tonight we have been trying to work out where the lag is coming from when you start an edu server. Using the same settings vanilla Minecraft was generating a new world in around 15 seconds, while the same map was generating in 50 seconds if you did it in edu, this is different on every server of course, but those were the times on mine. After several hours of messing around, again nothing can be attributed to me, Aleksi has found the issue and has fixed it, so now vanilla and edu generate the world in the same amount of time. He is about to give me the new version to test out for myself and I am amazed at his coding prowess and bug squishing skills.
The reason I am writing this post is to acknowledge, again with my limited experience, the amount of work that the development team producing MinecraftEdu put into creating a stable, bug free build for public release. I don't think that I would have got the same response from the developers of Minecraft when it was in beta stage, perhaps because so many people were testing it. A massive hat tip to Aleksi for listening when we say "this isn't working" or "this doesn't do what it is supposed to" and actually spending so much of his time not only fixing and altering things based on our feedback, but also for chatting and explaining to me what he is doing while fixing issues.
I really appreciate it, and thought that I should let the MinecraftEdu community know that Aleksi (who I am currently calling the 'code king') does listen to feedback, acts on it and uses it to create a better product for you. So if you are having issues with MinecraftEdu let us know via the google group linked above, request membership if you have not already and join us in our discussions about using MinecraftEdu (or Minecraft) in schools.
Friday, 20 April 2012
The Word Is Spreading.....
And that word is MINECRAFTEDU!!!!! Finally I have another staff member on board, and it is not because I have been trying, in fact I have not been trying at all with my staff. I know one other staff member is interested in using Minecraft with her class later in the year when they study the novel "Hatchet" as a creative writing prompt, but I have not been pushing my staff to use it until I am 100% sure the server is stable and that they have had the appropriate 'training'.
But, today I had a visit from the other Year 7 Science teacher in which we were discussing our upcoming assessment on methods of heat transfer and conserving energy in houses. In the past years I have usually just explained how you can conserve heat in houses and avoided creating models, while last year the other teacher got the students to make models. The reason I tend not to let the students make models any more, I have done so in the past, is because I think they spend so long making their model that the 'learning' that I want them to achieve gets lost. I know some of you will disagree with that, but it is the way I feel, so much time gets spent on these models in the classroom that what really is a brief topic becomes something of a marathon to get through, and of course once you start down that path, it is impossible to say to the students "well actually the idea I had for assessing your knowledge by getting you to make a model explaining x,y and z is not worth the time we are putting into it, so lets just forget about it hey."
In the discussion I had with my colleague today, her feeling was the same, for the learning we want to assess, the time to create a model is just not worth it in an already crowded curriculum. Now I do know that 2 of our 3 year 7 classes have experienced Minecraft, one in my Science classes, the other in Humanities with me, so that only leaves one class, and I think both of the Science classes that my colleague teaches have been hassling her to let them use Minecraft in their classes. So after some discussion about how we want to go about this particular assessment we have come up with a plan, that hopefully will meet our time requirements, assessment requirements and also enable the students to create a model depicting their understanding.
We are hoping to wrap this up in about 4 lessons, and here is our basic plan as it stands now (it will probably change).
Lesson 1: Introduce the task, explaining what the requirements are, and how we are going to assess it. Then show a tour of a 'house' created by myself in Minecraft explaining some of the additions to my house to help in energy conservation. Brainstorm some of the ways we can conserve energy in houses. Then research new ways of conserving heat in houses.
Lesson 2: Continue researching, write a plan of ideas to teachers for approval prior to beginning to entering the Minecraft world to create their model house.
Lesson 3: Building of models, writing a 'script' for the tour.
Lesson 4: Finishing touches to model or script, then recording a tour of their house explaining their additions and which form of heat transfer they affect.
So the learning intention is something along the lines of "Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of how heat can be conserved or gained through conduction, convection and radiation."
Our criteria for meeting this intention are:
So all that really is left is to find a couple of good 2 bedroom unit floor plans, and then transfer these into a Minecraft world in a snowy area, a desert area and a plains area depicting the different climates that students can choose to build in. Now here comes the bit where I am not entirely sure what to do. I would hope that one of the ideas that students come up with for an energy efficient house is which way the house faces. So do I lay the floor plan down for them, or do I just give them an example one to copy and make them lay down the plan themselves?
I am actually leaning towards creating a quite large estate with different 'house' lots for the students to build on, but laying the floor plan down facing different directions on different lots and the students can choose the one they want, and those that do understand the ramifications about which way a house faces can talk about that in their tour.
The excellent thing about this is that I only really need to create each floor plan once, and then use the new 'worldedit' features in the latest development build of MinecraftEdu to copy them over again as many times as required in the different climates. My long term aim, is to have a world specific to each year 7 class, or perhaps an area in one world for each class, and then the students can 'live' in the houses they create and we can keep coming back to this world for any future Science classes, and maybe even Humanities classes, but just use different areas of the map for different models or experiments and lessons.
I have about a week or so before this begins, so if you would like to share some ideas or thoughts about this, I would really like to hear it soon so that I can perhaps add more value to this idea, so please add them in the comments below.
But, today I had a visit from the other Year 7 Science teacher in which we were discussing our upcoming assessment on methods of heat transfer and conserving energy in houses. In the past years I have usually just explained how you can conserve heat in houses and avoided creating models, while last year the other teacher got the students to make models. The reason I tend not to let the students make models any more, I have done so in the past, is because I think they spend so long making their model that the 'learning' that I want them to achieve gets lost. I know some of you will disagree with that, but it is the way I feel, so much time gets spent on these models in the classroom that what really is a brief topic becomes something of a marathon to get through, and of course once you start down that path, it is impossible to say to the students "well actually the idea I had for assessing your knowledge by getting you to make a model explaining x,y and z is not worth the time we are putting into it, so lets just forget about it hey."
In the discussion I had with my colleague today, her feeling was the same, for the learning we want to assess, the time to create a model is just not worth it in an already crowded curriculum. Now I do know that 2 of our 3 year 7 classes have experienced Minecraft, one in my Science classes, the other in Humanities with me, so that only leaves one class, and I think both of the Science classes that my colleague teaches have been hassling her to let them use Minecraft in their classes. So after some discussion about how we want to go about this particular assessment we have come up with a plan, that hopefully will meet our time requirements, assessment requirements and also enable the students to create a model depicting their understanding.
We are hoping to wrap this up in about 4 lessons, and here is our basic plan as it stands now (it will probably change).
Lesson 1: Introduce the task, explaining what the requirements are, and how we are going to assess it. Then show a tour of a 'house' created by myself in Minecraft explaining some of the additions to my house to help in energy conservation. Brainstorm some of the ways we can conserve energy in houses. Then research new ways of conserving heat in houses.
Lesson 2: Continue researching, write a plan of ideas to teachers for approval prior to beginning to entering the Minecraft world to create their model house.
Lesson 3: Building of models, writing a 'script' for the tour.
Lesson 4: Finishing touches to model or script, then recording a tour of their house explaining their additions and which form of heat transfer they affect.
So the learning intention is something along the lines of "Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of how heat can be conserved or gained through conduction, convection and radiation."
Our criteria for meeting this intention are:
- My model has ?? additions for conserving/gaining heat through conduction.
- My model has ?? additions for conserving/gaining heat through convection.
- My model has ?? additions for conserving/gaining heat through radiation.
- I used the appropriate vocabulary when explaining how my additions conserve/gain heat in my tour.
So all that really is left is to find a couple of good 2 bedroom unit floor plans, and then transfer these into a Minecraft world in a snowy area, a desert area and a plains area depicting the different climates that students can choose to build in. Now here comes the bit where I am not entirely sure what to do. I would hope that one of the ideas that students come up with for an energy efficient house is which way the house faces. So do I lay the floor plan down for them, or do I just give them an example one to copy and make them lay down the plan themselves?
I am actually leaning towards creating a quite large estate with different 'house' lots for the students to build on, but laying the floor plan down facing different directions on different lots and the students can choose the one they want, and those that do understand the ramifications about which way a house faces can talk about that in their tour.
The excellent thing about this is that I only really need to create each floor plan once, and then use the new 'worldedit' features in the latest development build of MinecraftEdu to copy them over again as many times as required in the different climates. My long term aim, is to have a world specific to each year 7 class, or perhaps an area in one world for each class, and then the students can 'live' in the houses they create and we can keep coming back to this world for any future Science classes, and maybe even Humanities classes, but just use different areas of the map for different models or experiments and lessons.
I have about a week or so before this begins, so if you would like to share some ideas or thoughts about this, I would really like to hear it soon so that I can perhaps add more value to this idea, so please add them in the comments below.
Monday, 16 April 2012
Cyber Safety
Normally when I hear the phrase 'cyber safety' I inwardly groan, however now that I am publishing a lot more things online that involve students I am beginning to realise that it is a very important thing. I don't want to give away information about students that is private and I would hope that they would show me the same respect.
The reason I am bringing this up is that I had a fairly big dilemma over the holidays. I had the neurotransmitter footage, and it was excellent footage, I was really happy with it. Except for one minor detail. One of my students had used their full name as their nickname in the game. Now I had a 4 options, 1) forget about the footage, 2) find footage without the name in it, 3) try to blur the name or 4) publish it whole.
I knew that publishing it whole was not fair on that student, and that I really should not consider that as an option, so that left me with the first 3 options. Forgetting the footage was not something I was willing to do without putting a bit of effort in to save it, so that was a last resort. I searched through the footage and came to realise that since the camera work is so dynamic, finding decent scenes without the name in it was almost impossible, so that left me with option 3, trying to blur or cover the name.
I tried covering the name with a blue square in Screenflow, it took a long time, and was also very distracting to watch, which was going to take away from the great lesson happening behind the blue square. So that left trying to blur it, now iMovie, the latest version at least, is an awesome software package for basic editing, but since Apple removed the ability to work with plugins there is no way to blur parts of the video.
After a fair amount of investigation as to what was the best option if I wanted to try blurring I settled on Adobe Premiere Elements. I am impressed with the software, it makes editing in HD possible for me and after watching a youtube tutorial on adding a blur away I went. 15 minutes of video at 30 frames per second, I visited each frame, making sure that if the name was there, you couldn't read it. This took an astronomical amount of time (about 6 hours) and I thought I had it nailed, so I published it to youtube as private and asked someone to take a look as well as taking a look myself.
I could see the name about 15 times, so I went back to Premiere and found those frames, re-edited and re-published. Looked at it myself, asked another person to look at it. We both thought it was ok, there was not a time when the name could be seen. So I made the video public. It is no longer public. Somehow people were managing to see the name. I have no idea how it works, I checked each frame individually in Premiere and each frame, if the name was present, had it blurred out.
So I have had to resort to option 1, forget about the footage, unfortunately. So if you were looking forward to seeing the map in action, sorry but I just don't have the time to spend, especially if it isn't going to work, to edit the footage and blur the name out. So instead I have just recorded a 13 minute or so walk-through of the map, explaining what we did, the concepts I covered (and missed) and the different areas of the map. I will upload this to my youtube channel shortly.
On a more positive note, classes have started again after a 2 week break, and I am heading back into teaching my year 7 class about states of matter. I am planning on showing the students the video I published to youtube and having a discussion about what they learnt at the time, and what they still remember. I am going to record the audio of the discussion we have and might publish that for you guys to have a listen to.
The interesting thing is that I showed them this comment that was put on that video
The reason I am bringing this up is that I had a fairly big dilemma over the holidays. I had the neurotransmitter footage, and it was excellent footage, I was really happy with it. Except for one minor detail. One of my students had used their full name as their nickname in the game. Now I had a 4 options, 1) forget about the footage, 2) find footage without the name in it, 3) try to blur the name or 4) publish it whole.
I knew that publishing it whole was not fair on that student, and that I really should not consider that as an option, so that left me with the first 3 options. Forgetting the footage was not something I was willing to do without putting a bit of effort in to save it, so that was a last resort. I searched through the footage and came to realise that since the camera work is so dynamic, finding decent scenes without the name in it was almost impossible, so that left me with option 3, trying to blur or cover the name.
I tried covering the name with a blue square in Screenflow, it took a long time, and was also very distracting to watch, which was going to take away from the great lesson happening behind the blue square. So that left trying to blur it, now iMovie, the latest version at least, is an awesome software package for basic editing, but since Apple removed the ability to work with plugins there is no way to blur parts of the video.
After a fair amount of investigation as to what was the best option if I wanted to try blurring I settled on Adobe Premiere Elements. I am impressed with the software, it makes editing in HD possible for me and after watching a youtube tutorial on adding a blur away I went. 15 minutes of video at 30 frames per second, I visited each frame, making sure that if the name was there, you couldn't read it. This took an astronomical amount of time (about 6 hours) and I thought I had it nailed, so I published it to youtube as private and asked someone to take a look as well as taking a look myself.
I could see the name about 15 times, so I went back to Premiere and found those frames, re-edited and re-published. Looked at it myself, asked another person to look at it. We both thought it was ok, there was not a time when the name could be seen. So I made the video public. It is no longer public. Somehow people were managing to see the name. I have no idea how it works, I checked each frame individually in Premiere and each frame, if the name was present, had it blurred out.
So I have had to resort to option 1, forget about the footage, unfortunately. So if you were looking forward to seeing the map in action, sorry but I just don't have the time to spend, especially if it isn't going to work, to edit the footage and blur the name out. So instead I have just recorded a 13 minute or so walk-through of the map, explaining what we did, the concepts I covered (and missed) and the different areas of the map. I will upload this to my youtube channel shortly.
On a more positive note, classes have started again after a 2 week break, and I am heading back into teaching my year 7 class about states of matter. I am planning on showing the students the video I published to youtube and having a discussion about what they learnt at the time, and what they still remember. I am going to record the audio of the discussion we have and might publish that for you guys to have a listen to.
The interesting thing is that I showed them this comment that was put on that video
Thursday, 29 March 2012
What Did I Actually Teach?
I have sorted through some of the footage from the neurotransmitter 2.0 map, and I must say I am disappointed with myself. I had given the students a pre-test to determine what they already knew about some of the concepts and ideas I wanted to cover in the lesson, it contained 11 questions, and broadly about 8 concepts. After the game (a full day later) I asked the students the exact same questions. Today I spend some time sorting through and collating the responses into a format I could use.
What I am really disappointed about, having gone through the footage, is how many 'teachable moments' I missed the opportunity to grab a hold of an use. Of the 8 or so concepts I think I actually managed about 2 of them to a level I deem as successful.
Most of the students have proven to me that they know that neurotransmitters get broken down by enzymes, which is something they did not know before. They have also shown that they now know the the 'job' of a neurotransmitter is to send the message on, but they are not clear where the message has come from, or where it is going to.
So what did I miss? Where neurotransmitters are stored, I did not explain to them that the chamber they were in was a vesicle, and that this vesicle was in the axon terminals of a nerve cell. I thought I explained diffusion is enough detail, but after chatting to the students about it, they made the comment that I didn't use the 'word' enough to get it stuck in their heads. The real disappointment for me was the 'explore' area of the map. The concepts there were completely missed, I still think the models were valid, but perhaps needed explanation, and so did the students.
As I said in my previous post they students gave the lesson an overall 3 out of 5 for learning, but with further discussion they would have liked me to guide them through the models, explaining the concept. I also, after reading the post test answers, think that this would allow much more learning of the concepts and a much clearer understanding. If we walked around the game as a group, and I talked to the students about each model, what it was showing, explaining the concepts behind it and also get them to try and work out the limitations of the model. I think that if the students can explain the limitations of the model then they really have a good grasp of the concept.
So where do I stand with the 'let kids just play in a world of my creating with learning opportunities for them'? At this stage, I am thinking that it doesn't work for me, or my students YET. This was the first time that this class has used games in the class, so perhaps some of the 'novelty' might wear off after a few more times (Is that a good thing or bad thing?) and they would begin to explore the learning opportunities available to them instead of running around the world exploring.
I think I have ranted enough for today, still trying to get my thoughts in order and sort out a plan for next time. Perhaps I will steal a class off another teacher at school to teach them about neurotransmitters and improve my skills that way, then I could see some improvement of my own skills and grabbing those teachable moments and also see if this map can be as effective as I think it can. Keep an eye on my youtube channel (EduElfie) for the footage, it will go up progressively over the next couple of weeks, as will some other interesting footage from a solids, liquids and gases introduction in Minecraft.
Feel free to comment, and thanks for taking the time to read.
What I am really disappointed about, having gone through the footage, is how many 'teachable moments' I missed the opportunity to grab a hold of an use. Of the 8 or so concepts I think I actually managed about 2 of them to a level I deem as successful.
Most of the students have proven to me that they know that neurotransmitters get broken down by enzymes, which is something they did not know before. They have also shown that they now know the the 'job' of a neurotransmitter is to send the message on, but they are not clear where the message has come from, or where it is going to.
So what did I miss? Where neurotransmitters are stored, I did not explain to them that the chamber they were in was a vesicle, and that this vesicle was in the axon terminals of a nerve cell. I thought I explained diffusion is enough detail, but after chatting to the students about it, they made the comment that I didn't use the 'word' enough to get it stuck in their heads. The real disappointment for me was the 'explore' area of the map. The concepts there were completely missed, I still think the models were valid, but perhaps needed explanation, and so did the students.
As I said in my previous post they students gave the lesson an overall 3 out of 5 for learning, but with further discussion they would have liked me to guide them through the models, explaining the concept. I also, after reading the post test answers, think that this would allow much more learning of the concepts and a much clearer understanding. If we walked around the game as a group, and I talked to the students about each model, what it was showing, explaining the concepts behind it and also get them to try and work out the limitations of the model. I think that if the students can explain the limitations of the model then they really have a good grasp of the concept.
So where do I stand with the 'let kids just play in a world of my creating with learning opportunities for them'? At this stage, I am thinking that it doesn't work for me, or my students YET. This was the first time that this class has used games in the class, so perhaps some of the 'novelty' might wear off after a few more times (Is that a good thing or bad thing?) and they would begin to explore the learning opportunities available to them instead of running around the world exploring.
I think I have ranted enough for today, still trying to get my thoughts in order and sort out a plan for next time. Perhaps I will steal a class off another teacher at school to teach them about neurotransmitters and improve my skills that way, then I could see some improvement of my own skills and grabbing those teachable moments and also see if this map can be as effective as I think it can. Keep an eye on my youtube channel (EduElfie) for the footage, it will go up progressively over the next couple of weeks, as will some other interesting footage from a solids, liquids and gases introduction in Minecraft.
Feel free to comment, and thanks for taking the time to read.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Post Game Reflection.
Well the class is over, now to have a think about how much learning happened, what I would do different next time and my overall feeling about the effectiveness of the map in general.
The good.
Students 'got' the idea behind neurotransmitters. I am confident that they understand that neurotransmitters move randomly (diffuse) across the synapse to receptors and 'stick' to the receptors on the next nerve cell. They also understand that it takes a certain number of neurotransmitter molecules binding to receptors to send the signal on. I am sure that they now understand is that neurotransmitter molecules are broken down by enzymes in the synapse and why that happens. The last thing I am certain they have is that the ratio of neurotransmitter:enzyme molecules is important, too many neurotransmitters and the signal will repeatedly send, too few and the message wont get sent on. We also had some great discussions about the content, concepts and also about the learning that was happening.
The Bad.
Some of my demonstrations did not work out entirely as I had planned (I also built some things in the wrong places). There were some glitches that prevented the enzyme demonstration working properly, redstone is still testing, and still fairly glitchy. The nerve demonstration area was nowhere near as 'good' as I would have liked it to be, students I don't think could see the links between the content and the demonstrations.
Where next?
The level of excitement in the room as we started 'playing a game' was palpable, this led to a fair amount of distraction at the beginning which slowed our progress through the map. Next time, I would seriously consider letting the play and explore part happen before the 'lesson' to get it out of their system. What I found most interesting was that my idea that these kids were older and therefore would not be as excited or distracted was completely incorrect. They were almost more excited than the younger kids, maybe it has something to do with learning in a different way after a longer time in a 'normal' classroom.
The redstone issue. I really don't know where to go here, it was rumored that they had fixed those bugs in 1.1.0, it still appears in 1.2.3, now the rumor is that it has been fixed in 1.2.4 So what next? Nothing I can do, except stop relying on it, which I had minimised as much as I could in this map, very basic circuits are still prone to bugging out. I had a series of pistons delayed by repeaters, and some of the repeaters were staying lit even though there was not a charge going into them.
The demonstration area is not secure, or complete. My plan was to get the students to have some input on the remaining demonstrations, by the time we got there, they were too eager to run around and explore the game, so I let them do that instead. Where next? I thought, as mentioned, that being older students they would be able to stay on task and that I would be able to trust them not to do the wrong thing, I was wrong, but hey I learnt something. So I will be securing the area to keep them hemmed in until I am ready for them to go free, and I have got feedback from the students about the instructions and links to the concepts that I will work through and try to improve the connections.
Overall thoughts.
It was a great lesson, the reflection time I had with students at the end was very powerful, interestingly when I asked them to rate the lesson in terms of learning out of 5, most said around 3, some of the issues for them was the time to learn the game and waiting for those who were slow to move around. The server issues we had (that is what you get when testing of course) impacted on their opinions, as they prevented some of the activities working as I had designed. They all however felt that they had learnt something, and that they were more likely to remember it than if they had learnt it in the traditional way. Will I do it again, yes, here comes Neurotransmitter 3.0 :D (in 12 months time).
Thanks for reading, don't forget to comment if you want.
The good.
Students 'got' the idea behind neurotransmitters. I am confident that they understand that neurotransmitters move randomly (diffuse) across the synapse to receptors and 'stick' to the receptors on the next nerve cell. They also understand that it takes a certain number of neurotransmitter molecules binding to receptors to send the signal on. I am sure that they now understand is that neurotransmitter molecules are broken down by enzymes in the synapse and why that happens. The last thing I am certain they have is that the ratio of neurotransmitter:enzyme molecules is important, too many neurotransmitters and the signal will repeatedly send, too few and the message wont get sent on. We also had some great discussions about the content, concepts and also about the learning that was happening.
The Bad.
Some of my demonstrations did not work out entirely as I had planned (I also built some things in the wrong places). There were some glitches that prevented the enzyme demonstration working properly, redstone is still testing, and still fairly glitchy. The nerve demonstration area was nowhere near as 'good' as I would have liked it to be, students I don't think could see the links between the content and the demonstrations.
Where next?
The level of excitement in the room as we started 'playing a game' was palpable, this led to a fair amount of distraction at the beginning which slowed our progress through the map. Next time, I would seriously consider letting the play and explore part happen before the 'lesson' to get it out of their system. What I found most interesting was that my idea that these kids were older and therefore would not be as excited or distracted was completely incorrect. They were almost more excited than the younger kids, maybe it has something to do with learning in a different way after a longer time in a 'normal' classroom.
The redstone issue. I really don't know where to go here, it was rumored that they had fixed those bugs in 1.1.0, it still appears in 1.2.3, now the rumor is that it has been fixed in 1.2.4 So what next? Nothing I can do, except stop relying on it, which I had minimised as much as I could in this map, very basic circuits are still prone to bugging out. I had a series of pistons delayed by repeaters, and some of the repeaters were staying lit even though there was not a charge going into them.
The demonstration area is not secure, or complete. My plan was to get the students to have some input on the remaining demonstrations, by the time we got there, they were too eager to run around and explore the game, so I let them do that instead. Where next? I thought, as mentioned, that being older students they would be able to stay on task and that I would be able to trust them not to do the wrong thing, I was wrong, but hey I learnt something. So I will be securing the area to keep them hemmed in until I am ready for them to go free, and I have got feedback from the students about the instructions and links to the concepts that I will work through and try to improve the connections.
Overall thoughts.
It was a great lesson, the reflection time I had with students at the end was very powerful, interestingly when I asked them to rate the lesson in terms of learning out of 5, most said around 3, some of the issues for them was the time to learn the game and waiting for those who were slow to move around. The server issues we had (that is what you get when testing of course) impacted on their opinions, as they prevented some of the activities working as I had designed. They all however felt that they had learnt something, and that they were more likely to remember it than if they had learnt it in the traditional way. Will I do it again, yes, here comes Neurotransmitter 3.0 :D (in 12 months time).
Thanks for reading, don't forget to comment if you want.
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13 budget gaming computers=$5200 @400 each
5538 USD to teach 12 kids 3 states of matter.
It may look cool, and fun, and super awesome, but I'm sorry, it's still a poor way to teach. There is no reason you can't do the same thing with a text book. Games must remain games, and school must remain school. This is like giving a 13 year old a copy of Call of Duty 1 and thinking that will teach him all he needs to know about WWII."
and then asked them what they thought. They were very defensive, they completely disagreed with the idea that this was a poor way to teach. Of course they did, they were playing a game, but they were also learning. I asked them what they would prefer, me or them reading them a slab of text, or what we did. No surprise here, they chose Minecraft. But I took it one step further and asked them whether they thought they learnt more this way. Their response was that they felt they did, and my gut feeling from the discussion we had today as we kept learning about the states of matter is that even after a 2 week break, they still remember what the 3 states are and how the molecules are 'spaced' in each state. For me, this is a massive win, it means that they do at least remember the lesson. Also that my goal of introducing them to the 3 states of matter, and sneakily, without mentioning it, the particle model was a success.
Anyway I think that is enough ranting for now, I will hopefully be posting a bit more regularly now that classes have started again, and will most certainly be updating you on the year 7 science class. As always thanks for taking the time to read and feel free to share your thoughts or feelings in the comments below.