The 7 C’s of Minecraft: Education Edition

Leave a comment Minecraft: Education Edition

 

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Minecraft in Education is on the cusp a new era.  A new dawn of integration into classrooms and learning environments across the globe and we eagerly await the launch of the full, licensed product that schools will stump up valuable cash for.  The marketing has been done, the conferences have been spoken at and the webinars delivered.  You’ve experienced the “wow”, so what about the “How”?  While for many will mean “How do I get started?” or even “How do I do X?”, for me it has led me to ask…

…”How would I do Minecraft Education Edition?”.  With a blank canvas to work on and a bottomless pit of resources, what would my Minecraft Education Edition look like?  For me there are 7 C’s that are at the very core of my vision of Minecraft in Education.  Read on and let’s reignite this discussion of growth and development starting, as every learning experience should, with the curriculum.

Curriculum

There are some incredible examples out there of learning explored within a Minecraft environment that the community and early innovators have developed and nurtured over the years.  There are new and exciting projects being completed every day.  But are the resources shared?  Not as widely or as completely as you might think.  In the frantic life of a classroom educator, sharing and uploading resources for others to use is pretty far down the list of priorities regardless of the good intentions of the individual.  The priority must always be towards the teachers own students.  My Minecraft Education Edition would ease this burden by providing a starter pack of world resources that an educator could pick up and teach across the curriculum with.  They would be designed by experienced educators and built by experienced builders.  They would form a core of expandable resources from which an educator could anchor and then develop their curriculum.  The resources would be underpinned by solid curriculum outcomes but be open enough to be easily adaptable or expandable by an educator to suit their own intended outcomes.  I would have a team of educators on hand to listen to the requests of the community and either offer advice or develop the resource to be added to the bank for the benefit of all.  Solid, subject specific, curriculum based resources, built and developed by and for educators would be at the absolute cornerstone of my Minecraft Education Edition.  This wouldn’t dictate how an educator used them but would provide a solid foundation on which they could build and develop their own resources.

Creation

Creating in game learning environments takes time.  A lot of time.  The wider Minecraft community have agreed with this for many years and many gifted coders and content creators have developed tools, skills and knowledge that streamline the process.  You want a dome on top of your tower?  There’s a tool for that.  You need an armada of ships approaching your port?  There’s another tool for that.  You’ve spent an hour creating a build area for one learner and now need 29 more exactly the same?  There’s a tool for that!  In my Minecraft classroom I’d be able to draw from these tools freely.  They’d use a common interface that made simple sense because I’d worked with the tool’s creators to develop one.  I’d be able to take a building from one world and drop it into the landscape from another.  My ability to create immersive learning environments wouldn’t be hindered by my ability to create in Minecraft!  The wider Minecraft community struggled with this problem years ago and solved it in many creative ways.  They coded solutions and tools that made their building easier and more efficient (not to mention more impressive).  In my Minecraft Education Edition, I’d have a creation package of tools that drew from the very best that the community had to offer but that operated in a simple and easy to understand way so that even the most novice Minecraft Educators could pick them up and create.

Collaboration

Within Office365 I can share documents and files with whomever I choose.  I can give them a copy of the file or I can give them editing permissions so we can collaborate on the same document in real time.  We can chat at the side of the document or even jump into a Skype call to discuss what the other is doing.  I can set up a class OneNote document with a few clicks of an email list and I then have full access to what my students are doing, how they are progressing and what feedback and guidance they need.  I call this “teaching” for ease of reference and it works pretty well across all sorts of mediums.

Within Minecraft I would have very similar collaboration tools.  I would have a simple collaboration option so I could invite another educator to collaborate on a build with me from wherever they may be and whatever their email domain may end with.  Likewise, I would have a simple user name list of learners I wanted to access a particular world.  I would be able to add any user from across the globe with the simple input of a username, email address or even domain ending (for example: xxx@anyschool.com).  In my Minecraft Education Edition, I would be able to collaborate with hundreds of others at once across any area of the globe and on any platform they happened to be working on and it would all be done with a simple username/email address click.

Community

I have blogged before about community and the power of collective working.  Suffice to say that this is one of the most important and valuable resources available to a Minecraft Educator.  The wider Minecraft community is a vast, vibrant and varied organic being.  It moves, shifts, innovates, shares and collaborates and produces something that is far more than the sum of its parts.  There are many ways that this community interacts, from private teams working on secret projects, to public forums sharing knowledge and support widely.  For a community to be successful however it needs a degree of organisation but it must be self-governing as to what this organisation looks like.  Some prefer to post in open message boards while others prefer to connect with individuals directly on Social Media.  My community would draw from all of these but would be centrally collated for ease of access.  Support is a huge factor and I would have experienced educators on hand to help out, advise and collaborate at short notice.  Nothing new here and the community has been doing this in abundance for years.  I would add in regular events (both physical local geographical and large scale virtual) to connect educators often and encourage the growth and sharing of skills and ideas widely.  There would be a Minecraft space running around the clock where educators could connect and try out new things together, seek advice and support each other.  Above all my community would be freely accessible and open to all.

Communication

This falls into several categories within Minecraft: digital, real life, virtual, and information.

The digital, in game chat has a very limited place in my classroom.  It can be used very effectively with students that find social communication difficult but for the vast majority of learners, it is an unnecessary distraction that keeps them from the intended learning.  Very few students in my classroom have ever typed anything into chat that was more constructive than saying the same thing in real life and often typed things that were more destructive.  The real life communications we have face to face in a classroom are far more powerful than any other.  I’d have the ability to turn off chat for all users in my classroom.

The virtual communication offered by mediums such as Skype or Beam are much more powerful in a constructive way.  They break down the barriers of classroom walls or geography and connect us globally in an instant.  In my Minecraft classroom I’d be able to quickly launch a group Skype session or Beam my session to a list of users I had been working with.  I’d also be able to communicate collaboratively via documents using the same user list I had in my Minecraft space.  So in effect my class Outlook group would also be my user group in Minecraft and in OneNote or in any other medium I choose to communicate with them.

The communication of information is an absolute minefield in Minecraft.  Signs are ignored by the vast majority of recreational players consuming adventure maps for fun.  Present a learner with 3 lines of text on a sign and they will ignore it unless I build in a purpose to the reading; add a chalk board with many lines of extended text and it may as well be written in hieroglyphics for many learners.  Deliver the text via a character in the game and it may be clicked on but will it be read and understood?  In my Minecraft classroom I would be able to deliver information in a variety of ways.  I’d have sound files play when a learner enters an area, I’d have on screen text displayed that matched the sound file and I’d have a OneNote (for example) document launch with the relevant text added to it.  I’d have chalkboards displaying a whole PowerPoint slide or YouTube clip.  I’d have NPC’s talking to learners and giving them things they need for the next learning phase.  I’d be able to communicate information using the myriad mediums we use in our non-Minecraft lessons but within the Minecraft environment.

Control

While developing 21st Century Digital Citizenship skills is all well and good it has limited space in my 1 hour session on Shakespeare.  If little Johnny is mining the depths of a chasm in search of diamonds for his sword to enable him to attack Jennifer, I want to be able to stop him in his tracks and bring him back onto the learning track.  Now sure enough, it could prompt a detailed discussion about the rights and wrongs of what makes a contributory, as opposed to a destructive citizen and the group would learn and grow as a result.  But (and it is a big “but”), that is not the intended learning of my session.  I need to deliver a learning outcome within the session time constraints and therefore I need to have control of the environment to ensure these can be delivered.  I’d be able to stop Johnny in his tracks, take his diamonds from him and move him back to the learning area so that he could get on with learning about Shakespeare.  Over time I may use these controls less and less and I may even completely ignore them eventually as my experience and confidence within the Minecraft learning environment grows, but from the outset I want omnipotent control over every aspect of the environment and what happens within it.

Coding

Now this is the one area that I am least experienced to speak about.  I’m an English teacher after all.  I see command block experts make the environment behave in ways I could only imagine.  I see coders create tools that boggle the mind in their creativity.  Even from my limited experience point I see the potential for using Minecraft to teach and develop coding skills.  It is clear however that whatever shape my coding took, the effects of the code must be demonstrated in the Minecraft environment.  I’d draw from the best that the modding, command blocking and Raspberry Pi Minecraft communities have to offer and work with them to create a unique, in game, coding experience.

There you have it.  My 7 C’s of Minecraft and my blue sky thinking on how I’d do it.  I have been deliberately ambiguous and contentious in some places in order to promote discussion and reignite the passion for innovation that so vibrantly lit the community in the early days.  How would you do it?  What have I missed?  What have I got completely wrong?  I’d love to know your thoughts so as always your comments and replies would be gratefully appreciated.  Let’s reignite this discussion of growth and shape the future of Minecraft in Education together from the chalk face!

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Minecraft: Education Edition – Don’t Teach Minecraft. Teach!

Leave a comment Minecraft: Education Edition, Teaching and Learning

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Educator:  “What can I teach with Minecraft?”

Me:  “What are you teaching next week?”

The question I am most often asked (aside from the ones that start “How do I…” regarding a particular feature) is “What can I teach with Minecraft?”.  My default answer is always the same: “What are you teaching next week?”.  It may sound like a dismissive, “cover all” answer but it really is essential.  And it doesn’t for one second imply that the educator should be delivering every single learning experience that week using Minecraft.  What it does is focus the educator on learning.

I have seen so many educators using Minecraft in sessions and Tweeting pictures of pixel art alongside a first night hut and a TNT cannon.  While I am sure the learners developed lots of “soft skills” in the sessions, I am always left asking “What was the intended learning outcome in these sessions?  How did learners demonstrate what they had learned?  How did it relate to curriculum outcomes?”.

Now there is a lot published about the skills developed using play as a medium for learning.  There is more again about the transferrable skills involved in using Minecraft as a collaboration medium in an educational setting.  For most school leaders, parents and sceptical educators, however, this simply won’t cut it.  They don’t want to see an activity that has had learning outcomes “crowbarred” onto them as a justification.  They want to see outcomes that are measurable and sustained.

So, yes, Minecraft has heaps of potential for exploring and developing “soft skills” and “21st Century Learning” and I am in no way taking anything away from this.  But what about demonstrable learning outcomes within a given curriculum area?  What about the stuff we are doing now, every day in our classrooms?  The solid curriculum stuff that today’s education comprises.

By asking the question “What are you teaching next week?”, what I am actually doing is asking the educator to consider several different options.  Let’s say they give me five things they are wanting to cover next week.  There will be something within those suggestions that prompts the question “Could you…?”.  When I am planning my non Minecraft lessons I ask this question more than any other.  “Could I use X app?”, “Could it be better with Y approach?” or “Could little Johnny do it better if he used Z?”.  It leads to a whole discussion with educators around what learning is being explored, what outcomes are expected and how those outcomes can be realised and demonstrated.

So start with the learning in mind, not the Minecraft!  Here are my top five tips for keeping the core thing, the core thing:

  1. Start with what you are teaching next.  If you were going to cover it in class over the next few weeks, then chances are it is based on solid curriculum content and attached to demonstrable learning outcomes.  These should always be the core starting point of all your planning, not just planning a Minecraft learning session.
  2. Think about how you were planning to teach the next thing. If you are delivering content, could this be prepared using a premade Minecraft environment?  So you were going to have students examine the structure of cells: could you set up that structure in Minecraft for them to explore?
  3. What activities were you going to incorporate? Look for ways to incorporate a blended approach to your Minecraft sessions.  Sometimes immersion is best where there is no break from the Minecraft experience and sometimes it is best to have students constantly refer to research notes or discuss with their team of collaborators.
  4. Re-imagine the learning. Look for opportunities to explore and demonstrate to learning in ways that would be impossible without this rich digital environment.  This could be anything from interacting with historical figures to actually following blood cells as they flow through the cardiovascular system.
  5. Keep the core thing, the core thing! Never start your planning with what you want learners to do in Minecraft (unless of course Minecraft skills are specified in your curriculum area).  And never try to press artificial learning outcomes onto an activity you think will be fun in Minecraft.  This learning will be shallow and short lived.  Look for ways to enrich the learning experience and explore new ways to demonstrate learning but have clear outcomes in mind at the very outset of planning.

Reach out to the community either through a Minecraft Mentor or via the #MinecraftEdu on Twitter if you have any questions regarding anything in this blog.  As always, your feedback in the comments would be gratefully received regarding your own journey and feel free to connect if you have any questions or support needs that I can help with.

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Minecraft: Education Edition and the Power of Community

2 Comments Minecraft: Education Edition

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Humans are social creatures; thriving when we form groups, networks and social structures.  We are often an active part of hundreds of different community networks including family, work and interest groups.  How we connect with and interact with those communities contributes to how successfully we operate both as an individual and a collective.  A community can be an incredibly powerful organism of connected individuals that add up to far more than the sum of their parts.  The Minecraft community is one such group (albeit one larger than many nations on Earth).

Part of the success of Minecraft is that it doesn’t come with a user guide!  Most people pick up the basics of moving, mining, building and crafting pretty quickly but that will only get you so far.  I absolutely guarantee you, that nobody created their first Nether Portal through individual experimentation.  So they must have reached out to the community in some way, choose whether that be a friend, family member, work colleague, Google search or YouTuber.  Every query, search result, image and YouTube video has a community member behind it.  Someone that has already made the journey you are embarking on and has trodden the ground and left a path.  Every idea, step, failure and achievement made and shared, strengthens that path and shifts it from a trail to a super highway over time.  The community knowledge is greater for it.  As is the way of every community across the globe.

My Minecraft Community

My community of connections within the broader Minecraft community are personal to my perspective and my journey just as yours will be to you.  When I set out to write this blog, I promised myself I wouldn’t name anyone for fear of missing someone off the list but suffice to say there are some incredibly selfless, generous, helpful, knowledgeable, creative, funny and all round fabulous people out there that have supported me over the years.  My thanks go out to each and every one of them and, yes, I even mean you at the back there!  But that isn’t the point of this blog at all.

When I started out with Minecraft in my classroom, I was both daunted and excited.  I used Twitter as my primary community connection tool (although I consequently discovered other routes, this remains my primary tool) so I followed Minecrafters widely and not just Teachers and Educators.  I followed YouTubers, Map Builders, Coders, Command Block experts, MCEdit Filter Writers, Digital Artists and Consultants, as well as amazing chalk face Teachers doing incredible things with Minecraft in their own classrooms.  Whenever I was stumped or needed help, I Tweeted.  Without exception, my cries for help were answered quickly and my skills grew.  When I felt confident enough to start sharing my experiences, I did, and people reached out to me for help.  I tried to either advise or refer them on to someone that could, as quickly as possible.

With “The Baddlands” came my first ever publically shared Minecraft in Education resource (download it from education.minecraft.net).  Until now, I never felt confident enough to share either my builds or my lesson plans with the community.  Sure, I shared ideas and solutions and I took part in many Skype support sessions with other developing practitioners but I never felt confident enough in my own skills to share until now.  Having put something out there, albeit as basic as it was, I have to say I wish I had done it years ago!  I spoke at several conferences, conventions and teach meets (and even on BBC Breakfast) about what I was doing, before I felt confident enough to share the resources.  With the launch of the new “Classroom” additions to Minecraft: Education Edition in September, and the additional community support and collaboration tools it will bring, there has never been a better or easier time or way to share your resources.  So why not take a chance and put something out there?

A Brave New World

As Minecraft: Education Edition becomes more established and grows its user base, so too the wider community will grow.  The diversity of experience and skill this will bring is something that I personally am very excited about.  I am very much looking forward to growing along with an entirely new generation of Minecraft Teachers and Educators and collaborating in ways that have yet to be explored and using platforms, tools, ideas and approaches that have yet to be invented.  So consider yourself a trail blazer, an innovator and an explorer and connect as widely as you can to forge this brave new world into a thriving, living, breathing community of growth.

Now you will come across things that frustrate you.  I have many times, in my Minecraft in Education journey.  Sometimes this is due to a knowledge gap and my community are amazing at plugging these.  Sometimes they are due to a narrowing of vision; I have got myself so far into a mine of discovery that I have reached a dead end and have lost sight of the many other mineshafts of approaches I could have taken to achieve my ends.  Now occasionally, I exhaust all avenues and still find myself frustrated by either a missing feature or tool.  If I’ve learned anything from the team at Microsoft, it is that they are absolutely open to any suggestions, feedback and ideas that the Education Community have to offer.  They are not always feasible but they are always listened to.  So feel free to Tweet @PlayCraftLearn or submit via the user voice at http://education.minecraft.net/support/

Top 5 Tips for Creating Your Own Minecraft Community

Reach Out:  The world of Minecraft in Education can be daunting and outside your comfort zone (trust me when I say it will NOT be outside your learners’ comfort zone).  There is a wealth of experience out there just ready, willing and keen to be shared.  The Minecraft Mentor programme is a great place to start your search but please don’t be put off by the experience of the Mentors.  No question is too small, too big or too complicated and there is no such thing as a “stupid question”.  One thing I will urge you to keep in mind however is that the Minecraft Mentors are volunteer Teachers and Educators, that are giving their time freely without re-numeration, in order to support the future development of the community and its educational impact.  Be nice and please be patient, they are often fitting your queries in and amongst full time jobs as teachers!

Share Your Journey:  Don’t be afraid to Tweet, Blog or share your journey in any way you find natural or comfortable.  Please don’t be intimidated by the things you see others doing.  Your journey is personal to you and your learners and is absolutely worth sharing, the negatives and positives.  You will often find others doing similar things that will connect, collaborate and suggest additions or improvements you hadn’t thought of.  Tweet a picture (use the hashtag #MinecraftEdu to connect with other likeminded Teachers and Educators) to start with and see what the response is.  It may just surprise you!

Share Your Discoveries:  If you see something that grabs your interest, share it with your own community.  If you’ve been offered advice, had a solution to a problem suggested or used a great resource then share it with your community.  You will not only be helping others grow but be growing your own learning.  Teaching others is a skill that both consolidates and solidifies learning in any learner.

Follow Widely:  Your Personal Learning Network may consist solely of Teachers & Educators, at the minute, who are sharing the latest and most innovative practise within your field.  Don’t be afraid to ask the most basic question, everyone has to start somewhere. Be prepared to expand this network and integrate into a whole new community of people. Some you may regard as “the elite”, some you may regard as “the watchers”.  Never, be afraid to ask the simplest of questions because someone somewhere will be happy to help and they may be a step further than you.  The broader Minecraft community, is as diverse as it is vibrant and amazing things are done outside the field of education that can be easily adapted and integrated into your own practise.  You may even have the best source of information and inspiration sitting in your classroom every day.  Open your mind, diversify your knowledge, consumption of input and great things will happen.

Take Time To Play:  This cannot be understated.  I make a point of sitting with my son every night to watch his favourite Minecraft YouTubers and to play multiplayer with him at least twice a week.  This connection with what captures the imaginations of our young people keeps me constantly “on my toes” in terms of what I incorporate into my classroom learning.  How I like to play, differs from how my son likes to play Minecraft and this diversifies both our experiences and skills.  He remains my “go to” expert in my community when it comes to Red Stone.  The connection with “play” is something that we often lose as adults due to time constraints but something which very much governs how our young people learn.  If we have lost the ability to play, how can we connect with the ability to learn?

The Bottom Line

Your Minecraft Community will become a vibrant and stimulating personal web of support and encouragement if you engage with it.  The relationships you create and nurture will reward you many times over, as they will in any other community.  And never be put off by the experiences of others or be afraid of your own voice.  I stand by the mantra; “Never judge your own Day One by someone else’s Day One Thousand”.  Share widely, engage often and nurture your own Minecraft Community so that every day of your development matters.

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Minecraft:Education Edition and the Power of Immersive Engagement

2 Comments Minecraft: Education Edition

Minecraft: Education Edition and the Power of Immersive Engagement

For fifteen years, I have taught English in some of the most economically deprived areas of the UK and worked with some of the most disaffected learners that main stream education has to offer.  Learners that face significant social, emotional, behavioural and developmental barriers to learning, with low self-esteem and even lower aspirations for their future.  My absolute core, driving educational principle is that education is the key to unlock a world of opportunities beyond the cycle of social and economic deprivation that some of my learners are currently trapped within.

For my learners, education is often a scary experience which triggers a “fight or flight” response.  From their perspective, English was very much “Here’s a bunch of words that I don’t understand, can’t read and don’t really want to try and work out.  How do I avoid showing my peers that I “can’t”?”  If my lessons are to have any kind of lasting effect, I have to overcome this emotional response and engage the mind of the young person before their body has time to formulate an escape plan.

I was fortunate enough to attend a professional development day some time ago led by Hywell Roberts on the power of accidental learning and the “Mantle of the Expert”.  It unified in my mind several strains of practise I had been trying out and gave meaning and direction to an approach that had been transforming my classroom.

My planning became driven by a simple but crucial question: How can I make this learning feel less like work?  The hunt was on for approaches and strategies that could sugar coat the learning pill or immerse learners so significantly in a scenario that the learning could get close enough to my learners for them to engage with it before it scared them off.  I transformed my learners into “genuine fake” expert movie makers, interior designers, zoologists, astronauts and game designers.  We explored technology, got messy with play and experimented with failure in the pursuit of learning.

Then I discovered Minecraft and my world changed yet again.

Here was an environment within which my learners could become immersed so that they experiment without fearing the failures, create without fear of judgement and explore without fear of getting lost.  They failed to trigger an explosion many times before they succeeded but, when they did, their explanation of how they did it was written from the perspective of an actual expert not one I’d engineered for them.  They created and iterated characters, settings and story structures without the fear of their ideas being judged by their peers.  They explored polar ice caps, developed sustainable living solutions, visited historical settings and wandered freely without fear of getting lost, getting hurt or getting it wrong.  Ask them what they had done in those sessions and their response would have been “We played Minecraft” not “We learned how to write a persuasive speech”.  Learners were so significantly immersed within a Minecraft world that the emotional “fight or flight” response hadn’t had time to take hold before the engagement had drawn them in.  But the learning was very real, quantifiable and measurable.

I structured the sessions and projects carefully, without being overly prescriptive in how things were to progress.  There was room for flexibility, creativity and individuality without leaving gaps for deviation and distraction.  Simulation and exploration were key elements of the sessions to try and maximise the potential for immersion.  I found there were far greater outcomes when learners had a base on which to build their ideas.  Giving them a central village to expand and anchor to,  created far more purposeful sessions than simply starting with a blank canvas world.  But I always structured the learning around a central “expert” scenario which empowered learners with credibility and purpose.  Learners took risks, experimented and eventually collaborated like I’d never seen before and none of it ever felt like “work” to them.

So how should you go about creating Immersive and Engaging Learning in your own Minecraft learning space?  Here are my top 5 tips:

1. Set up a scenario.  The power of immersion within Minecraft is huge.  Add a little back story and role play to take immersion to the next level within the environment.  Don’t just explore geographical features in the terrain; turn the learners into geologists studying a new land and reporting back to a panel of “genuine fake” experts.

2. Keep the core thing, the core thing.  Plan your project with the key learning in mind from the outset.  Never approach a project with what you want to do in Minecraft but with what you want to learn as the core driver.  Then add a scenario with a back story giving purpose and direction to the learning and an added layer of immersion.

3. Failure is Fine.  If we want experimental learners that take risks and try out new things we need to model that behaviour ourselves.  Engineer situations in which failure is a key factor towards success.  And don’t worry about things going wrong with the project; identify, iterate and move on.

4. Don’t be the expert in the room.  Empower learners with a scenario in which they are the expert or with a journey that will result in them feeling like an expert when they emerge.  Guide them from the side of the learning rather than leading by the hand.  And always add a role for yourself within the scenario which you can fulfil without breaking the immersion factor.

5. Ask and promote the asking of questions.  A curious mind is a great thing and inquisitive learners are a joy to work with.  For some it comes naturally but it is also a learning behaviour which can be modelled and developed in those that find it less easy.  So question everything from “why have you chosen that place to build?” to “what would happen if..?”.  Model the asking of iterative questions that promote growth and development.  It never ceases to surprise me how quickly learners pick up on this and begin to use the language of iteration with their own work as well as with their peers.  Make the questioning part of the scenario.

As always, if your classroom feels much like mine, feel free to reach out and connect if you want to collaborate on an immersive learning project or if you want any advice or support adding these elements to your own practise.  Your comments would be gratefully received and engaged with.

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Minecraft: Education Edition. Creating Stories in Minecraft

Leave a comment Minecraft: Education Edition

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Welcome to the Baddlands!!

The Baddlands is a literacy playground in which educators and learners are free to customize, adapt, build and create as they see fit.  From a starting point in the hills above a central village, the story unfolds as the exploration expands.  It evolves as your narrative develops.  Explore in it, build in it, play in it.  Create YOUR story, YOUR way!

Lesson Plan

https://sway.com/s/TxyVEgBHj1ZiomHJ/embed

Map Download Here

If you’d like to share what your group creates, connect with others using the Baddlands or collaborate with me on a project, feel free to get in touch.

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Minecraft: Education Edition Beta – First Impressions

Leave a comment Minecraft: Education Edition

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Minecraft: Education Edition Beta

First Impressions

A new age has dawned in the Minecraft in Education world.  On May 2nd over 100 eager schools from over 30 countries finally got their hands on a small packet of code that had been hotly anticipated for many months.  Minecraft: Education Edition Beta had finally been released for testing.  And boy what a launch.

The group is made up of educators and students from diverse backgrounds, using myriad devices (albeit those running Windows 10 or OS X El Capitan) and drawing from a broad spectrum of experience.  In short, everything that makes the Minecraft community the rich and vibrant group it is today.  There were those eager to break their very first blocks, those that had used Minecraft outside of education and were looking forward to bringing it into their classrooms and those that had previously used various versions of Minecraft in their own classroom (including MinecraftEdu users).  All waited with baited breath for the announcement that the download link had gone live.

Now I would love to say that the initial launch days ran seamlessly however that is not the way of beta testing software.  There were hiccups and hurdles, bugs and broken bits with the Minecraft Education team worked tirelessly to solve and remove.  My personal experience was one of seamless installation and booting on my laptop and a slightly less than seamless installation on my Windows 10 Tablet.  The niggles and bugs and frustrations are irrelevant to me at this point.  I have every faith in the Microsoft team to release a solid package later in the spring for open testing that will have none of these things.  After all, that’s why there is a closed Beta, to catch these things before launch.

There are some features I am not allowed to write about here and some that I don’t want to until later in the spring.  One thing I do want to mention however is the link to an Office 365 account for schools.  This has caused everything from panic to hysteria to scepticism and cynicism.  I have been party to more conversations about “tenants, switches, hubs and IP’s” than I care to think about over the last few days.  As a collaboration platform I see its worth 100%.  But then I am a little more “bought in” to the Microsoft education package than some in the beta test and so am looking more towards an awesome future of seamless integration than those.

So what about the experience?

The familiar menu screens of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition give way seamlessly to a world that runs like silk over ice.  I remember first booting the java platform Minecraft and then spending a good 10 minutes adjusting video options to get something running over 6fps.  The first thing I did on booting M:EE was turn all the display options up to maximum and go for a wander.  I cannot overstate how smooth the experience in world is.  Those of you experienced with java Minecraft will get what I mean within seconds of launching.  This thing runs like greased lightning and renders to horizon and beyond seamlessly!

There are a number of education specific features that have been added to this version (some of which I can’t talk about at the minute but suffice to say the future looks very bright indeed).  What I will mention is the Camera and Portfolio.  One of the biggest barriers to using Minecraft in a classroom has always be “How do I demonstrate student learning?”  Well here it is… and it works amazingly well!  Point the camera at what you’ve built and snap a shot to export into whatever document you wish.  Or place the camera and frame yourself (and your classmates if you can round them up) in the shot.  It tracks the player brilliantly, can be pre-placed by teachers at set points to structure the progression and exports seamlessly in a far more user friendly way than screenshots ever have before!  All these snaps are collated automatically into a handy Portfolio.  This looks very much like a scrap book of memories and allows the shots to be captioned and exported to enable their integration into other apps.  It works smoothly and has clearly been designed with education in mind.  Give us the ability to “geotag” the image with map coordinates and video capture as well as static snap and this pairing would knock the socks off anything similar in previous iterations.

OK so the beta isn’t without bugs, can’t handle any of the mods or build tools that we have relied on in the past and isn’t as fully featured as other versions (pistons anyone?) but as a platform on which the future of Minecraft in Education can be built, it is a great start point.  The Microsoft team are listening and open to any and all feedback from the community (whether you are involved in the beta test or not).  Now is the time to let your voice be heard.  Feedback

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Literacy Blocks 4: The Future Of Minecraft in Education – Part 2 

1 Comment Minecraft: Education Edition, Teaching and Learning

Screenshot (73)

The 3 Hour Challenge

As I explained in Part 1 of this blog, I strongly believe that the potential of Minecraft in Education is immense.  From coding to collaboration, Maths to Myths; Minecraft can be used to explore them all.  There are however barriers to its potential being fully realised:

  1. Teachers are not necessarily Minecrafters
  2. Immersive content takes time and skill

There are tools out there to aid the build process and speed things up.  Many of these tools can be found on Adam Clarke’s (@TheCommonPeople) “101 Ideas For Minecraft Learners” series on his YouTube channel.  I set myself the challenge of seeing whether or not I could create something multi purpose that could be used in several different Literacy lessons to explore various different features of writing.

Preparations

The first thing I needed was a set of schematics for the buildings I wanted to add to the world.  Schematics are the blueprints for Minecraft creations that someone else has built and shared online.  I visited http://www.minecraft-schematics.com/ to browse the thousands of schematic files on there and managed to locate a handful of files that I wanted to experiment with ranging from small huts to large castles.

Problem one: It took me nearly thirty minutes of searching to locate the files I thought might be useful and there is no way to preview the schematic in your world without switching to MCEdit.

Next I needed a blank map with a few more features than a “flat world”.  World Painter (http://www.worldpainter.net/) is a fabulous tool which allows a user to terraform a map before exporting it as a usable Minecraft world file.  I sculpted a flat area in the middle with a nearby waterway and a range of biomes around the edges to explore and develop.

Screenshot (62)

The Build

After opening the world in Minecraft to load the area…

Screenshot (63)

… I closed it and switched to MCEdit (http://www.mcedit.net/) which is a magical piece of software allowing, among a myriad of other functions and features, the insertion of schematic files into a world.  Within an hour I was able to insert the files into my map and position them accurately.

Screenshot (64) Screenshot (65) Screenshot (66)

Problem Two: MCEdit can be difficult to control.  It is an amazing piece of software that has revolutionised the way maps are built in Minecraft.  However, a novice teacher looking to start out with Minecraft in the classroom may find it difficult to use.

The Results

Screenshot (67) Screenshot (68) Screenshot (69) Screenshot (70) Screenshot (71) Screenshot (72) Screenshot (73) Screenshot (74) Screenshot (75)

The results of my experimental challenge were quite pleasing and I’m sure that with practice, I could get the build time down even further.  I still need to add details such as paved streets and lights which really bring a map to life.  I haven’t even touched a lesson plan or objective yet either.  There isn’t a single command block or speck of redstone anywhere in the build.  However, if I had started from an empty map without the aid of the tools above I might have only been able to lay out some foundations in the time.  I certainly wouldn’t have anything like the outcome of this experiment.

My intention was to explore ways of reducing the build time for teachers wanting to create rich, immersive Minecraft experiences for their learners.  I gave myself a strict time limit and used about two and a half hours on the experiment in total and by that point the potential and limitations of the tools I explored were clear:

  1. Schematics offer great potential for teachers to draw upon the skills of others however are rarely built with education in mind.  There are thousands of them available which is both a blessing and a curse.  It may be costly to commission a build to create bespoke schematics.
  2. MCEdit, and the ability to manipulate large numbers of blocks in a world, offers massive potential for creating custom content for a specific learning environment.  The controls and interface are difficult to master and potentially a deterrent to novice Minecraft teachers.
  3. The potential of complex command block programs or even simple redstone mechanisms is immense with a whole world of options to truly bring the learning to life.  Within the 3 hour challenge, I didn’t even touch on tools such as http://mcstacker.bimbimma.com/ which offers the simplification of command block programming.  Even using this tool however I would have struggled to create very much, compared to what is possible.

Feed It Forward

So to the crunch.  I am issuing an open challenge to both the Education and Minecraft communities.  Try the 3 Hour Challenge for yourself.  What can you achieve?  Share your tips and barriers in the comments below or on Twitter (either direct to me @SimBadd64 or using the #MC3HourChallenge).  Suggest a feature that you wish you had at your disposal to make building lesson content easier.  Share a schematic you have built that might help a teacher out for free.  Paste a command block code for a specific function that could add to the learning.  Link to a YouTube tutorial you found useful.

I will attempt to collate the results, tips, barriers and suggestions into regular updates over the next few weeks and post them on this blog.  In keeping with the sharing ethos of both the Education and Minecraft Communities, any resources you share must be freely available.

So go on… take the #MC3HourChallenge and let’s push the boundaries together..

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Literacy Blocks 3: The Future Of Minecraft In Education – Part 1

Leave a comment Minecraft: Education Edition, Teaching and Learning

Literacy Blocks 3: The Future Of Minecraft In Education – Part 1

Screenshot (72)

July 4th and 5th 2015:  Minecon, London.  Ten thousand Minecraft enthusiasts from all corners of the planet converged on the ExCel Centre in London for the world’s largest ever convention for a single video game: Minecraft.  I was privileged enough to attend along with a group of other educators as a guest of Microsoft Education to experience the event and think about how Minecraft can play an ongoing role in education.  Some had never placed a block in their lives; others were several years into their Minecraft adventures.  As I sat in the training sessions provided for us on the Sunday afternoon (expertly led by Stephen Reid (@ImmersiveMind) and Sarah Guthals (@SarahGuthals)) several things solidified in my mind:

  1. Minecraft is an amazing, immersive platform on which to build camouflaged learning
  2. Teachers are not Minecraft experts

The enthusiasm spread throughout the non Minecrafters in that session like a wildfire.  The “Just One More Block” infection reached epidemic proportions.  Adults took advice from the child experts circulating the room to troubleshoot problems.  The educators became the students.  However, as the teachers in the room were enthusiastically building dirt shelters, I couldn’t help taking a step back from the situation and taking stock.

The Problem

Time!

Our students may be thousands of hours into their Minecraft journey.  The community is five years into it’s evolution and development.  Teachers simply don’t have the time needed to invest in the development of their Minecraft skills in order to create the type of immersive experience that students can download for fun at home.

So how can teachers quickly and efficiently create immersive experiences for their students?

I am two years into my own Minecraft journey of discovery (18 months spent developing Minecraft in the classroom) and my build skills are mediocre at best.  Some months ago I set about the challenge of simplifying the process for teachers.  I explored avenues such as commissioning build teams to realise my vision on my behalf but the cost was prohibitive (hundreds of hours of building are needed for a quality build).  I looked into the sale of maps in order to fund the build and discovered that the Mojang EULA prohibits this explicitly.  So I looked for tools that could speed up the process of building.  Thanks to the amazing Adam Clarke (@TheCommonPeople) and his “101 Ideas for Minecraft Learners” section of his YouTube channel, I discovered some gems and set about experimenting.

And so to today:

The 3 Hour Challenge

I set myself a target of three hours to create something that was multi purpose and could be used in several different Literacy lessons to pursue various learning outcomes.  What I achieved in that time, would have taken hundreds of hours if I had undertaken the build without the aid of the time saving tools available.

Part 2 of this blog will explore the process, tools used and outcomes of the challenge.  It has left me more motivated than ever to remove the barriers for other teachers and enable them to quickly incorporate quality, immersive and time efficient builds into their classrooms.  The teaching community shares the Minecraft community ethos of sharing freely and widely.  Part 2 of this blog will instigate a community wide challenge which I hope you will join me in rising to.

Feel free to leave a comment or connect with me on Twitter (@SimBadd64) to discuss anything contained here further.

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Literacy Blocks 2: Where do I start with Minecraft in Literacy?

Leave a comment Minecraft: Education Edition, Teaching and Learning

Getting Started

minecraft

My first Minecraft blog focused on: “Why?”.  Since then, the main question dominating the feedback has been “How?”.  How do I get started?  How do I set about planning a lesson?  How do I ensure students aren’t just running around randomly enjoying the game?

The first boot into Minecraft can be daunting for teachers wanting to create a learning experience.  The immensity of the worlds and the limitless possibilities for creations can seem overwhelming.  Thankfully MinecraftEdu comes equipped with a World Library featuring some incredible creations from teachers around the world.  The time, effort and skill that has gone into these creations is amazing.  For a teacher looking for a starting point they are invaluable.

First Steps

One of the first worlds added to this library was built by Joel Levin, the co creator of MinecraftEdu.  The world is set at the top of Mount Everest, 200 years in the future in a scenario involving the melting of the polar ice caps, the destruction of all plant and animal life on Earth, mankind escaping into orbit aboard an ark and a group of survivors tasked with saving the world.  The opportunities presented by this map are many, varied and rich.

Background Story

From a starting point inside the mountain students explore their way to the surface encountering story blocks along the way.  When I first used the map, students raced past this to be the first to the top.  So I added a case file.

Case File

The case file is fundamental to engaging students in the reading.  By the time students have explored enough to complete the file they have built up a solid background about the scenario.  They are immersed in the story and are invested in the success or failure of the mission.  Most importantly they have been reading for a specific purpose and extracting crucial information.  This task has been camouflaged by its integration within the game.

The Writing

As this storyline develops, students discover that the last remaining tree on Earth is growing in a cave underground.  From this they must replant a forest using saplings, craft tools to excavate resources, consume wood in the process of smelting iron in order to build a signal rocket.  Once they are immersed in the experience, any writing task becomes an extension of the game and at this point the fundamental question of “what do my students need?” takes priority.  Whatever weaknesses the students have demonstrated as far as writing is concerned can be targeted.

  • A diary entry from the point of view of the scientists that sealed the survivors in the bunker 200 years ago.
  • A scientific report detailing the groups progress towards repopulating the Earth with trees and plants.
  • A first person account of the first days after waking up in the bunker.
  • A news report detailing the return to Earth of the rest of mankind.
  • “What happened to all the trees?”

It is this final task that I chose first.  This student had struggled to engage in writing.  They were underperforming in writing tasks due to no other factor than a lack of motivation.  The story was written by hand then edited following feedback and typed up into an in game book.

What happened to all the trees

By immersing the student in the experience of the scenario and giving them a vested interest in the success of the mission this student was motivated to demonstrate the skills that they had previously struggled to display.

The Big Question

My starting point was knowing what the student needed motivation to demonstrate.  I then found a world that provided the immersion and motivation that would camouflage the writing end product.  Once students are engaged and motivated, the tasks become less of a chore and more of an extension to the experience.

Faced with the daunting task of creating an immersive experience at the start of my “Minecraft in learning” journey I focused on the fundamental question: What do my students need?  The MinecraftEdu World Library provided the experience, I provided the teaching and the students demonstrated the learning.

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Literacy Blocks – Using Minecraft to Engage and Motivate Reluctant Writers

8 Comments Minecraft: Education Edition, Teaching and Learning

minecraft

Why Minecraft?

Photographs, video clips, poetry, personal experiences, objects, memories.  Not an exhaustive list but a sample of some of the things English teachers use every day to try and engage students and immerse them in writing tasks.  The problem we face is that, for many students, writing feels like work.  Not academic work (solving a maths problem or working out an engineering problem) but actual work more attuned with digging the garden or washing up.  My job as an English Teacher is to find a way to overcome this and motivate my learners so that they are willing to disregard the work feeling and actually want to write something.

My son is a typical 9 year old reluctant writer.  He struggles with his handwriting which makes him slower than his peers at producing written work.  He becomes frustrated that his writing doesn’t look like theirs and that he hasn’t written as much as them.  As a result of this he becomes distracted and distracts others as an avoidance strategy.  I’m sure you recognise him in your own classroom.

At home he plays Minecraft.  He loves the open world sandbox nature of the game.  It doesn’t tell him what to do, where to go or how to play.  He is free to create his own experience within the game.  One evening, early last year, I noticed my son had stopped playing and was huddled over the table.  He had several sheets of notepaper in front of him filled with writing.  When I asked him what he was up to he barely looked up.  He explained that he had just explored a ruined shipwreck on a tropical island and a band of zombie pirates had tried to capture his treasure.  He had decided to write the story down because he had enjoyed creating it and playing it.

That moment was a real lightbulb moment for me.  He had been so motivated, enthused and immersed in his creation that the writing didn’t feel like work.  It had become an extension of the game experience.  So if it had worked for him why couldn’t it work for others?

The reasons I chose MinecraftEdu over “vanilla” Minecraft are many and varied but I will leave those for another day.

StoryLand

The idea behind my StoryLand is simple and was suggested to me by the amazing Adam Clarke (@thecommonpeople).  Starting from a Central Library floating above the world students are transported to various different experience zones.  After 20-30 minutes in the zone they are frozen in-game and complete a writing activity.  The writing is then transferred into in-game books and stored in chests within the library for future visitors to read.  The writing can be anything from a story to a news report depending on which areas of weakness the student has.

Central Library

Library

Tropical Island

Jungle+Island

Dungeon Library

Dungeon+Library

I have 2 groups set up, during lunchtimes, to facilitate this world.  The first is the user group.  They are the students typified by my son.  The reluctant writers.  This groups membership changes periodically based on needs.  They need no previous Minecraft experience and are using Minecraft as an experience and immersion tool to try and harness their enthusiasm for the game and translate it into motivated writing.

The second group is made up of more experienced Minecraft users.  These are the driving force of the project; they create buildings, landscape features and hints at storylines within the game; they search the map for new areas that could host a story; they place strategic signs with adventurous keywords that could be used in a description of the area; they rebuild when things go wrong.  They give their time freely and love the responsibility they share.

Yeah, but…

There are of course some serious issues raised by the use of video games in any learning environment.  Our first ever live session with students was filmed for BBC Breakfast and Tim Muffett asked some probing questions surrounding concerns over gaming addiction.  I have also been asked whether or not Minecraft has any intrinsic educational value at all or whether it is just a digital box of Lego for children to play with.  Minecraft is like a blank sheet of paper.  It can be folded into amazing creations; it can become a canvas for spectacular works of art; it can host incredible immersive stories; it can be whatever your imagination can make it.  A sheet of paper has no intrinsic educational value but in the right hands it can be an amazing learning tool.  Any enjoyable activity can become addictive unless it is moderated.  MinecraftEdu has teacher controls at its core to allow absolute control over the time and experience in game.  Harnessing an enthusiasm for a particular thing and using it to engage and motivate learners however is entirely different to feeding and fuelling an addiction.

For those that look at a bucket of Lego and see a pile of brightly coloured bricks MinecraftEdu will one one of those innovations you pass over and move on.  If you’ve ever looked at that pile of bricks and seen a castle (maybe with jet boosters and a split level couch) MinecraftEdu might just be the medium you have been looking for.  I took the plunge and got blocky.  The adventure has only just begun!

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