More tutorials.

Just a quick post to embed the new tutorial videos, these are much better quality than the laggy ones I uploaded of in-game screens last week.

I hope they are helpful.

WOW!!!!

My mind is blown. I just walked out of a double year 9 Science class wondering what exactly happened. I was not sure my 21 question map was going to go very well but after the amount of time and effort I had put in to getting it ready to go I was not going to chicken out. After some initial 'how do we do this' and 'I don't understand' comments from the kids it ran very smoothly. Most of the kids were working solidly for over an hour before getting somewhat frustrated, but most managed to get through all of the questions in that time.

There were some glitches that needed to be fixed on the fly with the redstone, I think having that much redstone in one area caused some update issues. I also had to complete some of the work on the last couple of rooms while the kids were in the first few rooms. So it was a very hectic lesson for me, but I really think the kids enjoyed it.

I asked the students yesterday to come up with 3 questions each, that were multiple choice with four options. I then used the questions in the map today, so they had to read some information, come up with relevant questions from the information and then give them to me. There was a large variety of questions and they were worded in 'kid speak' so there were no real understanding issues.

So they had to learn something yesterday and then apply that knowledge today to get through the rooms. I also asked if they would like to build the rollercoaster at the end of the map and they thought that would be a great idea, so there was my carrot to get to the end.

It took about 3 and a half hours just to get the questions into the map, and then another 2 or so hours to make the answers line up with the redstone wiring, so is this a sustainable amount of work, no, but it was a very interesting experience today. I am a bit torn, in a normal class, with those 21 questions on a piece of paper, they would have been done within half an hour maximum, but would they have got the same learning experience out if it? So what extra did they get for the extra half hour working through it.....

As the kids were working through the questions they were asking eachother for help, so collaboration, something that they are not always good at was definitely there. They were definitely more involved in the learning experience. There was almost a sense of pride in themselves when they got the door to open to get to the next room. I also think because the questions were in a different order for all of them, they could be an 'expert' on a question they had done, but others had not, so even those who do not always offer answers to others in class could do so in this space without repercussions.

I did shut down the internal text chat early on in the lesson as they were getting a bit silly, and I meant to open it up again later for them, but I got so busy helping them through the rooms and confirming the redstone was right that I forgot. So that is a quick, or perhaps not so quick, summary of what happened in class today.

I have been thinking about how much time has been spent on this map, and I think it is around 24-30 hours building the map, then the 6ish hours putting the questions in. I have an idea of how to speed this process of putting questions in but I don't have the programming know-how to get it done. If any of you out there reading do have a bit of knowledge of programming let me know, and I will explain what my thoughts are and you can tell me whether it is even possible.

I have recovered my voice, so I am planning on doing some more recording of tutorials tonight, and re-recording the laggy ones, so keep an eye on my youtube channel.

Finally Finished!!! (almost)

Hi all, yet another update on the 21 question map. It is done!!! Almost, I have now thought it would be pretty cool to build a rollercoaster on the end for the kids to ride once they have finished the questions, and then at the end of the rollercoaster there would be a sign with the port for the free build world.

But I think that will have to wait until I see how it actually goes with students on Tuesday. I am planning on using it with 2 classes, my year 7 Science and year 9 Science classes. All I need to do now is write the questions into my modified infolocations.ini file and it will be right to go. I have hit a snag there though. Whenever an information box is 'saved' in game, it undoes all of my formatting and ordering. Quite problematic as I built a 'Staff Only' room where teachers could format the questions the way they wanted, save them and then these would show up at the top of the infolocations.ini file and they could be copy-pasted into the students boxes. I would of course need to record a how-to video on this process, but it is a pretty basic idea.

If this can not be worked around, (I emailed the devs to ask), I will probably have to build a separate teacher world where they can edit and format questions. This would not be as daunting as sifting through the 1575 lines of information boxes, it would only be 75, then they could open the 2 infolocations files side by side and copy-paste that way.

Now for some more screenshots of the complete build, minus the rollercoaster.

 This is just showing the staff only door, this is off the spawn area. Teachers would just need to give themselves a lever, or fly over the wall to get into the room.

 Down the bottom of this picture is the starting location as seen in previous posts, with the entire build fading off into the distance.

 The side of the first 'half' of the build, i really didn't expect it to be this big, I don't know why.

 This picture picks up where the last one left off and shows the rest of the build. I think I am going to do some calculations of how many of each type of material went in, but that is just too much for my brain right now.

This just shows the length of the 6th and final room with 6 questions in it.

After I have completed my testing with the kids, sorted out the question problems and recorded my how-to video on adding questions and making the correct lever tie to the answer I will put it up for download for those MinecraftEdu teachers out there who would like to give it a go.

Tutorials.

I have uploaded my first tutorial about MinecraftEdu to youtube, you can find it here if you are interested. This one just shows you how to install MinecraftEdu on a mac, but gives you some hints for installing on windows as it is very similar. I am in the process of recording more tutorials so keep checking back if you are interested.

And also a second one on how to start a server using the MinecraftEdu Launcher.

There are also 2 others, but I am not going to embed them here as the video is not the best quality. Feel free to watch them and give me some feedback, I am hoping to re-record them once I work out what caused the dodgy quality.

Another Trial.

Well I ran another class of MinecraftEdu yesterday. This time with my year 7 class. I made up a quick tutorial sheet and started a new world and creatively placed stone and coal around the spawn area, as in creative mode, not artistically. Then I let the mayhem begin.

Again the kids were very excited and had a great time. The tutorial sheet was basic movement and basic crafting. Not all of the kids bothered to read the sheet, but after a heap of prompting most did and followed the instructions.

One girl when we started the class said "but I dont know how to play" and by the end when I asked her for some feedback on the tutorial sheet she said it was fine. I suggested a more structured tutorial world and she thought that would probably make it much easier to follow, so I will be creating one of them in the near future.

So now back into map making, particularly my question map, damn you Notch for releasing Minecraft 1.0.0, as I have been playing rather than mapping. I will hopefully have the map created for Tuesdays lesson with both the year 9 class and also for the year 7 class.

I am also thinking on getting the kids to create some maps by working together, these would be like 3D tour maps of what we are learning about, but I may need to give them an example first.

Success??

I have been in contact with the staff that had my Minecraft class today. I decided to run the survival world with limited resources with the kids while I was not there and see how it went. The response from both staff members was really positive, one said it was awesome, the other said that all were on task, and that 100% were on Minecraft. So really excited I went to Maccas and used the free wifi to get access to the server via remote desktop, saved the world and then uploaded it to dropbox. Then I tried to download it to my computer, the wifi was so slow that it was going to take avout 3 hours to download 12mb. So I gave up on that and downloaded it using the 3G on my iPad, then transferred it from the dropbox app to my goodreader app and then transferred it to my laptop via file transfer, instead of 3 hours it took around 5 minutes. This was after wasting around 30 minutes trying to get it down on my laptop. What did I learn from this, I need a phone that I can tether my laptop to. But I am getting well of track. So I loaded up the world into MinecraftEdu and was really excited to see what the kids had done during the hour and a half they had to play in there. I almost laughed out loud when I saw what had happened. Because this was a full survival map, just with border blocks around an area that I wanted the kids to stay in I expected to see some structures in this area, there was none, very little sign of activity at all. So I changed into creative mode to have a fly around and see what I could see. The kids had escaped my confinement, I am guessing that they discovered by accident how to get rid of the border blocks, and then all decided to get in on the act and away they went. By this point I think I was chuckling to myself. The more I reflect on what has happened the more I realise that my two goals for the lesson were most likely still met. All I really wanted was for the kids to invest time in the game so that they would want to play in future, and at the same time build some team work in. I feel that they probably did collaborate on the escape, and those that didnt know the game prior very well, would most likely have a much greater understanding from those that did. And I am guessing since the teacher that had them for the second half of the double said they were all still involved and playing that they were invested in the game and having a good time. So was it a resounding success, I am not sure, was it a success, I honestly believe it was. I have already emailed the devs and explained what happened, and they will fix it in the next release, so no more escaping kids. Damn creepers!!!! Now it is time to get back to making my quiz map, I need it ready by Tuesday, so I am really on a limited time now. I will upload screenshots when I get back into the land of fast wifi access that I dont have to pay through the nose for, Seriously who would pay $5 for 30mins or 10mb. Certainly not me.

First class.

Well I went through a very interesting lesson with kids today. I decided to try and teach them what they would need to know to survive in a minecraft world by getting them all in a server and walking them through basic crafting and block placing. I would not do it this way again. I think next time I would use a tutorial world and a tutorial sheet to go with it.

I figured that they would know the basics of gaming, and some did, but the majority didn't. This caused some issues with people keeping up. On the brighter side the Edu mod was fantastic, I could keep teleporting the kids back to me when they wandered off. I could freeze them in place so that they would listen while I was giving them instructions. When they were getting a bit silly with the digging of holes I could stop them building/breaking blocks. I could switch to creative mode with the click of a button and place blocks down to show them what they looked like, and then give them the opportunity to mine them.

I am really happy with the way the server and mod work, I just need to work on my students. I am planning to leave the limited resources survival map for the kids to play on tomorrow, but have left alternative work for them to do if they don't want to play, if they get sick of it, disinterested or start behaving poorly. I will be very interested to get the feedback from both the teacher taking them and the students themselves after an hour or so in the world. And of course to see what they have managed to achieve and build by working together as a team.