Learning Minecraft

I've begun my learning journey in Minecraft recently, and who better to do it with than my 6 year old son. We've played Terraria in the past before (pre hard mode only) and a little familiar with it, so we approached it thinking it'd be the same. I've also gone through the Tutorial World in the Education Edition, so packed with this knowledge, I thought we would be okay. We set one rule (well it's more for me), and that is that we are not allowed to look anything up DURING gameplay. We are to note it down if we aren't sure of something or something doesn't work and we do the research afterwards for the next session. So far we've had 3 sessions in total (2 in Education Edition and 1 in Java) and it's been quite interesting.

The beginning

Our initial session in Education Edition was relatively easy. I had it set to Peaceful and realised it didn't affect hunger so after my son got accustomed to the controls and the new 3D environment, I put it up to Normal. The crafting recipe box that shows up makes things so much easier - I remember when I first tried to play a few years ago, I was constantly looking up recipes because I had no idea. Also, from my run through of the Tutorial World in MCEE, I had some basic ideas on what we needed to make to get going at the beginning - crafting table, furnace, chest, and house.

Crafting Table, Furnace and Chest

         

Crafting recipes on the left hand side

                                                                     
We were able to get to stone-made equipment, found some coal to make torches, defeated a few zombies, and we were on our way to experimenting a little and exploring more. I also made use of the Classroom Mode to try a few things out. I disabled PvP damage as we were accidentally hitting each other when we were mining closeby and also teleported my son to the house when he ventured too far off and became lost. I used the fixed equip command to place quill and cameras in our hotbars so we could journal our adventures there. That was the original plan - to do a virtual journal rather than via the blog.

Don't copy that command - it's wrong :(

The last two hotbars are the fixed slots. Camera and Quill (writable_book)

These three are photos taken from the in game camera. (You can use an item called Portfolio to export them as image files)

However, we ran into a little hiccup. My son's game was crashing frequently in our first 2 sessions and when we booted up for the 3rd one, we found out he only had 3 trial sessions left! So rather than playing this out and possibly getting one, maybe two more sessions in, I purchased an extra retail copy for my son and continue/restart the journey there. I mean how different could it be?

Same but different

I created the world and a house with the usual starter setup as mentioned before on my own so that when we have the next Minecraft session, it'd all be there. Java version was pretty much the same but I noticed a few differences. For example, it had the recipe box to tell me what I can make, though it only showed me recipes I unlocked from obtaining new ingredients. This meant I couldn't plan ahead with what materials I needed to find like I did in MCEE, making it a more "raw" playing experience.

Crafting recipe guide on retail.

I also found it much more difficult. It was on Normal, but I never died in MCEE, but I died on my fifth or sixth night on retail. I realised the hard way, that when you die, you drop EVERYTHING you have on you. I was a little greedy because I found an iron-rich area, got carried away mining it all and pushed my luck with time, even though I knew it was going to be night very soon. To make matters worse, I was low on torches and quite far from my house! I saw the death message in the chat channel, so I went back to retrieve my hard earned iron and stone items, but I didn't even make it halfway there; shot down by some skeletons. So I thought I'd sleep until morning and go when it's safe. But alas, I get the message, "there are enemies nearby so you can't sleep". So I AFK'd for a few minutes in the house and waited in real (game) time until morning to collect my belongings. As most of you veteran Minecrafters can guess (and probably facepalming right now), my belongings were gone. I was naked except for the clothes assigned to the default Steve skin I chose. In just a few short moments, all that hard work amounted to nothing. That's when I realised that death in this game mode (on Normal anyway) is something you need to actually worry about and plan ahead to avoid happening!

Luckily, I still had the house, crafting table, furnace chests and bed so when my son and I started our 3rd Minecraft session, 1st in the Java version, we had somewhere safe to hide. Just before we booted this up though, I found out about player skins and it made me realise why so many students in my classes in the past were so fond of pixel art. I got an Optimus Prime skin for my son and a guy with a Chicago Bulls shirt for myself. I also tried editing mine and the experience made me definitely want to go back and revisit this aspect, try to make my own skin from scratch.

Reflection - comparing the two so far

After the 3rd session, we found some more iron to make my son an iron chest armor and myself an iron sword. We stocked up on some food, I tried fishing and we expanded the house just a little in size. I tried planting some seeds and my son planted some trees right outside the house and it was a great experience for him to see his trees grow, absolutely amazed him. I also used the tip I found in the Global Minecraft Mentor resources about using a shovel to pave roads, and my son is obsessed with this! He is so busy creating paths wherever we go, that I need to make lots of extra shovels, but he also drops to his death occasionally too.

I must say, having some basic background knowledge of the game made this much more enjoyable than when I first tried to dabble in it years ago. I don't mind looking up guides when stuck in a game, but back then, it was like I had to alt-tab out constantly. It was like somebody giving me some tools, throwing me into a forest and telling me to craft some furniture. I was just completely overwhelmed! The Tutorial World in MCEE showed me just enough to get me kickstarted in the game, without feeling the need to know more. From these basics, I would try to expand on it out of curiosity. It actually made me want to experiment and find things out myself, because I understood the basics - I didn't want to be told the answer. This in turn would help me remember things more effectively as I was "learning by doing". When you have your own "aha" moments.

There were a few things I missed about the Education Edition from playing the retail one. First is the clarity of name plates. In MCEE, it's really easy to spot where the other players are. The name plates are clearly visible through objects. But in retail, unless I have line of sight of the player, it's very difficult to spot them. So when my son is yelling for help, I am frantically running and looking around, whilst asking him to describe where he is. (Which can also be a good exercise too!) I also miss the camera and the quill, and the ability to add fixed inventory slots. My son loved taking photos, just like he does in real life when playing with my phone (so many random photos on there thanks to him), and when he found out you can set the camera up on a stand and you can take selfies, he was even happier.

One thing I did like about the retail was the way the crafting recipe book worked. I liked how it slowly unlocked recipes as you gathered/discover new materials. It gives a more steady sense of progression, whereas in MCEE you can click a button to see all available recipes, making it easy to just get either overwhelmed by the choices or over ambitious and go straight for the top. (making it more of a result rather than journey based experience) The difficulty isn't a big thing, I can always make it higher on MCEE and I'm sure it'll kick my backside either way.

I will continue the Minecraft sessions with my son on retail, just because there's no trial limit for him. And I might play around with the Windows 10 version that comes free for people who purchased the retail, since you can cross platform play on that. I think that's something MCEE can benefit from, as the school I'm in doesn't have a space where 30 kids can play at the same time. Lots of students have P.E (Pocket Edition) on their devices, so it would make things logistically easier. Also, since it's a little difficult for our school to set up an "always on" server, the cross platform feature again would really be useful.

My plan is to learn the game with my son from the retail version and use the knowledge gained from that to test out things on MCEE. Whether it's lesson ideas, map ideas, designs, etc...

I recorded some footage of one of our MCEE sessions a week ago and edited it so it doesn't go for 70 minutes! Enjoy :)

iPad session reflection

Just wanted to quickly write this up before I forget. A few days back I was with a year 5 class doing team teaching with iPads. It was their first session, so I went along with my 'lesson plan' which I had prepared for all the other introductory sessions. One of the activities for these sessions was a 'wikipedia game' (an idea I got from the Extra Creditz show on Gamifying Education ), where students start on a wikipedia page for a particular topic and have to find their way to the wikipedia page of a different particular topic via the use of links embedded in the information only. The first exercise was to get from "chair" to "whiteboard", and it was quite amazing to see the different strategies and methods all the students used to get from "chair" to "whiteboard". The average amount of links was 7, and the record set at the school was 2!

However, with this particular class, they didn't seem too interested. Perhaps it was too hard for this particular group? Although the lessons with iPads were only with year 5 and 6 classes, and the other year 5 and 6 (plus one year 4 class in a 4/5 composite class) seemed to relatively enjoy it... One particular student did the ol' "type up 'whiteboard' in the search column of wikipedia", to which I told him (like I did to all the others who tried this in previous classes) that it did not follow the rules and so this cannot be allowed. To this, he was quite upset because he tried to reason with me that since both his way and the game's way essentially gets you to the 'end point' that this should be fine. He was questioning why does he have to do it in a certain way? At the time I was slightly taken aback and fired back with the usual "it's not the way you are supposed to do it, so you are wrong!" response. After seeing this result in the student become completely disengaged with the activity, I went home to try and reflect on this activity and perhaps its execution.

After re-watching the Extra Creditz episode, I have started to consider that the topic itself was not very exciting. I mean a CHAIR and a WHITEBOARD!? Like WOAH slow down dude...Also if I wanted the activity done in a particular way, I think next time I should explain WHY I would like it done this way. Thinking back of the first class I did this with, I told them that since the class will be ultimately creating their own wiki page on Antarctica, this game should get them more familiar with how a wiki page could look like and how it could work. Therefore that class was given a sense of purpose. Hmm, now thinking back to the last class, the purpose I may have implied to that class would have been, "it's a competition, so WIN!" Meaning, that could be why the less interested students just tried to complete it as quickly as they could. (This is also another topic I want to write about in a future post.)

Another thing I have noticed during these iPad sessions is the amount of students who are into Minecraft. I have been following Minecraft Teacher's blog and have been interested in this game as a learning tool, but I never really got around to checking the game out. It made me start looking at the various sites dedicated to the game, even downloaded a free version of the game on iPad (which I know is nothing like the actual version out now) and when I revisited the Minecraft Teacher 's site, I noticed a post called Structured vs Unstructured. I thought it was a very interesting read and it got me to reflect on what kind of learning environment I prefer. I can see the pros and cons of both, but I guess, the best way would be to combine the two, although to get that 'perfect balance' might be a bit difficult, and it would really differ from class to class... Hmm...

Just some final thoughts/observations/notes, I've noticed most of the students (and teachers), seem to want to use the iPad for its apps. I get requests for various apps that can help various things. Also the lack of flash makes teachers not warm to it because a lot of the websites they want to use with the class are flash based. (and the apps that enable you to view flash content, are not free...). Moreover, from just looking at the classes in general, most of the students just want to play games, or hop on YouTube so it would be great if I can find a way so that these children can play these games but make it a learning experience at the same time. I can think of a few ways this can be done (because ultimately we're always learning something, especially from our hobbies), but I just find it hard for them to do this within their class' curriculums.
Finally, I just wanted to point out this excellent site I stumbled across whilst doing some research in preparation of these iPad sessions. The most awesome thing is, that all this was done by a year 9 boy! I just love seeing stuff like this... moments of the students teaching the teachers! I am trying to keep an open mind in my own iPad sessions, and even discovered a few whiz kids in year 6! (Making them my tech support guys to help me fix any bunged up ones :))


FINAL NOTE (I promise!): I am half tempted to set up a private Minecraft server just for students, and not be involved at all, and anything can go. Will it end up like Lord of the Flies? Will people create chaos, just because they can? Will they try to create some sort of agreement amongst each other? Or will people just stop playing there because, well it's the internet and they don't have to deal with that crap. Funny, how I am just foreseeing chaos no matter what. I just can't see it being a place where nothing is stirred up lol.