tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64480074345748416452024-03-08T10:58:15.567-08:00GFS MinecraftAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16108825767928684508noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6448007434574841645.post-10024033870127152272014-05-08T15:53:00.001-07:002014-05-08T15:53:02.112-07:00Minecraft Afternoon Club - Rebuilding the GFS campus with Middle SchoolersSince there was such a positive response from the Middle Schoolers and Minecraft, I was asked to start an afternoon club for the remainder of this school year. Seven of the Garrison girls signed up shortly after the announcement was made at morning meeting and I was delighted to find that some of the those from January's minimester course were on the list. This meant I had a group that was most certainly inclined to learn more about Minecraft and technology concepts. I planned to have them help me rebuild the GFS campus all while plugging in programming and electrical engineering concepts by using command blocks and Redstone, respectively. So far, we have constructed quite a few parts of the campus, but we definitely have plenty more work ahead of us. We've faced numerous challenges and have a list of unanswered questions although the girls have made a clear and solid effort to overcome the hurdles in place in order to meet our goal.<br />
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Preserving the detail and beauty of the campus has been my main priority from the start. Since I first had this idea in mind, I've been taking careful note of the intricacies as I walk around campus. Each time I notice something new, I take a picture with my cell phone and reference it later while I am building in the game. I even went so far as to gather original drawings which contain accurate measurements of each building's dimensions. Translating real-world measurements in to Minecraft was a bit tricky at first, but I decided that our scale would be 2 feet = 1 Minecraft block. This decision resulted from a few iterations of the Marshall Offutt building; some felt too big, some felt too small, but using this scale felt just right. Of course, nothing is going to be absolutely perfect since we are restricted by using only cubes, but we can do our best to compensate for lack of accuracy with some clever workarounds.<br />
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Thus far, we have been working on reconstructing the Marshall Offutt building as it was the first set of floor plans I was able to obtain and, not to mention, it is seemingly the "main" building on campus considering it contains the Admissions Office along with the office of the Head of School. Below are some side-by-side comparisons of the real Marshall Offutt building versus our rendition within Minecraft.<br />
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<i> (Front-side view of Marshall Offutt as of 4/28/2014)</i><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RtiNaMVS6i0/U2vG00x7_2I/AAAAAAAAECg/FxSIlYDDxbs/s1600/MarshallOffutt-FrontSide+(5).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RtiNaMVS6i0/U2vG00x7_2I/AAAAAAAAECg/FxSIlYDDxbs/s1600/MarshallOffutt-FrontSide+(5).jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i> (Our Minecraft rendition of Marshall Offutt from a similar perspective)</i></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DC4YFJu608E/U2vGuZiVgJI/AAAAAAAAECY/1IZK12Zr50I/s1600/MarshallOffutt-FrontSide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DC4YFJu608E/U2vGuZiVgJI/AAAAAAAAECY/1IZK12Zr50I/s1600/MarshallOffutt-FrontSide.png" height="334" width="640" /></a></div>
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For the readers who aren't familiar with Minecraft, you'll notice the lack of fine detail with the in-game screenshot. Objects such as the trees aren't very easy to create and you often need to manually adjust them to your needs. We must use our best judgement to pick blocks and textures that closely match what we are building.<br />
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Another not-so-obvious difference between the real-life picture and in-game screenshot is the front entrance of Marshall Offutt. You'll notice in the real picture that it appears to be significantly wider than the in-game version. This is because we found ourselves facing a dilemma when first constructing this archway. If we want to change this, depending on whether or not we add an even or odd number of blocks, it will either be too wide or we will have an odd number of blocks which causes the doorways to be off-center. We've had to make this same decision regarding many other parts of the building, not just the entrance.<br />
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Currently, it is 8 blocks wide which, since we are working with an even number, allows everything within the archway to be symmetric which stays true to the building's design. We thought adding one block would make it wide enough, but we then lost symmetry since we are working with an odd number of blocks. If we added two blocks to the width, it became slightly too wide despite maintaining symmetry.<br />
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We balanced our options and decided that symmetry was most important in this case. On top of that, we felt that there was less of an impact from using 8 blocks where it felt just a little too small as opposed to using 10 blocks which felt way too wide. Clearly, we've learned to compromise!<br />
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Below are more side-by-side comparisons:<br />
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<i> (View of Marshall Offutt from the courtyard)</i><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a6bXlbQeXK8/U2vLTtU5D8I/AAAAAAAAEDE/Qf0eJetDcx8/s1600/MarshallOffutt-RightSide+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a6bXlbQeXK8/U2vLTtU5D8I/AAAAAAAAEDE/Qf0eJetDcx8/s1600/MarshallOffutt-RightSide+(1).jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i> (Similar perspective in our Minecraft world)</i><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vyzFJh7n488/U2vLOx0HBHI/AAAAAAAAEC8/0Mc_VD6hhLk/s1600/MarshallOffutt-RightSide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vyzFJh7n488/U2vLOx0HBHI/AAAAAAAAEC8/0Mc_VD6hhLk/s1600/MarshallOffutt-RightSide.png" height="334" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i> (Pathway on the left side of Marshall Offutt)</i></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h5Vk1jNi1qU/U2vNzXKLgyI/AAAAAAAAEDc/eSRXDtpdTxM/s1600/IMG_2952.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h5Vk1jNi1qU/U2vNzXKLgyI/AAAAAAAAEDc/eSRXDtpdTxM/s1600/IMG_2952.JPG" height="478" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i> (Similar perspective in our Minecraft world)</i><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-55YYfOztorM/U2vNvurCZzI/AAAAAAAAEDU/JmeRX5zTFmc/s1600/MarshallOffutt-LeftSide-Pathway.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-55YYfOztorM/U2vNvurCZzI/AAAAAAAAEDU/JmeRX5zTFmc/s1600/MarshallOffutt-LeftSide-Pathway.png" height="334" width="640" /></a></div>
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Of course, these are not intended to represent our final product as we still have <i>much</i> more work to do. Once we are content that Marshall Offutt is finished, we will complete the inside detailing which includes things like desks, chairs, whiteboards, and even non-player character (NPC) representations of real GFS faculty members.<br />
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One of our more important goals involving this campus rebuild is to have the girls get their hands on Redstone and command blocks. We will use Redstone to design electrical circuitry which will control the lighting system throughout the building and command blocks to write scripts for various functions that cannot be achieved using normal Minecraft blocks. A simple example of this includes checking a condition for a player's age to either allow or disallow entry to certain rooms.<br />
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At our next meeting, we will resume work on Marshall Offutt and, hopefully, get started working on Redstone and command blocks. I can tell the girls are eager to learn more than just how to play Minecraft. They want to take home knowledge that is applicable elsewhere and I know this will be a good starting point for them. Once they learn the basics of programming syntax and logic, they will have no problem transitioning over to other languages whether it be procedural, object-oriented, web-based, whatever!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16108825767928684508noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6448007434574841645.post-68222654018310961742014-02-04T21:46:00.002-08:002014-03-21T09:59:52.443-07:00Minecraft Minimester 2014: How I Inadvertently Established a Virtual Communist Society<b style="color: red;">Warning: </b><i>This is a long-winded post that was written retroactively as I didn't find time to write it up as the course progressed. I found the whole experience to be extremely fulfilling and fascinating so I wanted to make sure I covered everything as it happened from my perspective. Some of the details may be somewhat inaccurate since I'm doing this entirely from memory and I expect there will be some minor timeline mixups. Names have been redacted in the interest of all involved as I have yet to ask them permission. Minecraft at GFS seems to be moving forward so expect more posts in the future. I hope you enjoy reading!</i><br />
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Minimester was slated to begin the day following Martin Luther King Day, a Tuesday, and end that Friday which gave us four 3-hour days of class. Unfortunately, the Baltimore area seems to be subject to odd climate changes with minimal notice and we were hit with a snowstorm that caused Tuesday and Wednesday's classes to be canceled. I was concerned that they would not push the minimester schedule back and I would be stuck with only two days, but they adjusted the schedule and this helped even more as it gave me a whole weekend to recap before finishing the second half of the course. In the weeks leading up to this, I spoke at a couple of morning meetings and was able to poll all of the roughly 150 students about Minecraft to gauge the overall interest.<br />
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"Who here plays Minecraft?" I saw 10-15 hands raised<br />
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"For those of you that <i>don't</i> already play, who here would <i>like</i> to play Minecraft?" This showed even more responses, maybe 20-30 hands.<br />
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I found the response to be surprisingly positive compared to my initial and ignorant expectations. There were far more of the girls interested in the game that I could have ever guessed. Having even 10 of them register would have been exciting for me and, at this point, the estimated cap for this course was about 17-18 since the classrooms only accommodate that many. If I had about 30-40 hands raised during that poll, the course should fill up quick. Right?<br />
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A final roster was given to me in the second week of January and it showed a total of 17 students registered; the cap had been met.This had me more enthusiastic about the course, as I tend to be when people share my interests, but it raised the stakes and the pressure I placed on myself to do well. This is essentially the one chance I have to show how effective the game is for education and, honestly, I wasn't sure if I would be prepared enough to teach <i>anything</i> about the game to the girls. Remember, there was little to no traditional academic material within our minimester course, just teamwork and fun. There was a stark possibility that every single one of them knew more than I did about the game as some of them have been playing regularly for <i>years</i> versus the two months I had. Of course, despite the potential for failure, I wasn't going to pass on a golden opportunity like this.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>Day 1</u></b></span><br />
Since my duties are typically reserved for IT operations, I had to do what I could to minimize the possibility of leaving my department stranded while I'm busy with class. They were both kind enough to give this a shot and accommodate me as best they could. Unfortunately for them, I was so anxious the night before day 1 that I didn't get very much sleep and opted to come in a bit late so I was more well-rested for the day. This left me rushing to gather my equipment and thoughts before making my way to the classroom.<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span>
Afternoon minimester classes were all scheduled to meet at 12:15PM and I was paired with a Middle School History teacher which left us to use her classroom. Fortunately, she had enough desks and chairs for the students plus a semi-circle desk that I moved to the back of the room which I intentionally and 'dorkily' set up to be a 'command station' of sorts. My Helix sat to my right so I could monitor the Virtual Machine running the Minecraft server, and my ASUS laptop sat in front of me running the Minecraft client, connected to the projector and set up for screen capture and audio input. On top of that, this angle allowed me to see just about all of the screens of each player which minimized my need to get up and move to a student's desk. Managing the entire game and real-world class would ideally be possible from this seat: my nerd throne.<br />
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The girls started arriving here and there with excited expressions on their faces as they sat down and powered on their laptops while I scrambled to ensure everything was functional. Since we had two snow days, the schedule was adjusted such that some of the girls in my course had to attend the Beauty and the Beast rehearsal instead. The History teacher started going through the roster and comparing it to the roster of those in rehearsal and it wasn't long before we realized that we would only have <i>five</i> of the girls in class. It was a bit disappointing, but it relieved a bit of the stress as well. We would make do with what we had and pick up where we left off the next day when everyone returned.<br />
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As a result of the buzz surrounding this game, the MS Spanish teacher had been talking to me about Minecraft for weeks leading up to the course and asked if her son could stop by and play. He was an avid Minecraft player, but only played single player at home. He simply wanted a group of friends to play with. How could I turn that down? He was 7 years old and, in the end, he did just as well as the 8th graders did. I viewed it as one more valuable team player. This left us with 8 players total including the 5 students, the Spanish teacher and her son (they used the same laptop), the History teacher, and myself. At this scale, Survival Mode doesn't seem to get as complex and as interesting as it does when you get in to the double-digits and higher, but we could still test out the structure for tomorrow's full roster.<br />
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Given that this was a group of 5 students and 2 teachers who were brand-new to the game, there was little to no conflict. We constructed a shelter for everyone, had a chest for food, and we were able to collect enough iron to start making iron tools. Since all of the students here were regular Minecraft players, there was little need to give them directive on how to play. We just had fun for the whole day.<br />
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The highlight of day 1 was the incredible amount of laughter as a result of the History teacher struggling to open wooden doors. She unintentionally broke the door and unkowningly picked it up which caused the zombies to come funneling through in the middle of the night while Mr. Rowley had to fend them off with an iron sword. Everyone loved it! We now jokingly ask her "OK... how do we open doors, Ms. History Teacher?" to which she responds "Right-click!!"<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>Day 2</u></b></span><br />
Everyone was present this day which proved to be a bit more of a technical nightmare than I had hoped for. Many of the girls were missing mice or chargers and some had laptops that didn't cooperate with MCEdu well due to unforseen software conflicts. Unfortunately, since Minecraft minimester was a last-minute decision, we weren't able to use the Media Room computers which would have made my job a tad bit easier in terms of deployment. Not to mention, I wouldn't have to force the girls to use minimized video settings in lieu of detailed graphics. No problem, though, as I came prepared with loaners and spare mice and chargers. They were kind enough to let me do this in the first place so I can't complain!<br />
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While I was busy getting the server in place, I had the girls complete a survey I made that would give me feedback on their Minecraft experiences as well as any other games. I wanted to understand not only their perspective on Minecraft, but games that I might have played too. Again, I was trying to bridge the gap of understanding between me and the mentality of a Middle School girl. The responses were <i>very</i> interesting.<br />
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By they time they finished the survey (and laughing at my question about their favorite <b>flavor</b> of Minecraft), I had the tutorial world loaded and the server address written up on the whiteboard. Most of the girls knew how to log in so they simply sat at the beginning of the tutorial world, frozen in place. I got the newer players connected and some of the other girls helped.<br />
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The simple explanation was this: we are going to complete the tutorial world to make sure that everyone in the class is comfortable with the game mechanics before we move back to Survival Mode.<br />
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One girl had a really tough time understanding how WASD controls work. Luckily, she was sitting right in front of me so I kept the pace with her step-by-step throughout the tutorial. I could watch her screen and use my player to provide feedback as to how she should complete the obstacles. I was worried she would struggle through the whole class. Nope. By the end of the tutorial world she had stopped asking me questions and kept telling me she was ready to go. Later I found out from other teachers that she is a particularly fast learner.<br />
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"Alright girls, listen up! It seems as though everyone is either done with the tutorial world or they are comfortable enough to move on. Who wants to switch to survival mode?"<br />
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Cue the excited screams. We were to move to Survival Mode after taking a 10 minute break.<br />
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Once everyone returned, I gave them the rundown on what was done the prior day and we built teams, each of which was to be led by one of the three experienced players. They were the two who met with me in the weeks leading up to minimester plus a good friend of theirs, also an expert player. I asked all three of them to pick teams and each one of them was more than happy to volunteer for what they thought they were best at. No arguments between them.<br />
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One of the group leaders raised her hand.<br />
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"Mr. Rowley, I think it's best if we re-balance the teams so that my build team has less players and the resource or farming team have more. If too many people try to build the same thing it gets complicated."<br />
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Great point. I took 3 out of her 7 players and re-assigned them to the other teams. She was left with 4 while the other teams both had 7-8. Her team would be easier to manage and, besides, if she needed more help, I would be playing an auxiliary position and could lend a hand.<br />
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"Girls, are we ready to start playing?"<br />
"YES!!!"<br />
"Everyone knows what team they are on?"<br />
"YES!!!!!!"<br />
"Everyone knows what they are supposed to do?"<br />
"OH MY GOSH YES MR. ROWLEY LET'S PLAY!!!"<br />
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I was giving them a bit of a hard time. I unchecked the freeze box and let them loose.<br />
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My original fear was that I would have to constantly manage players as they would be prone to "running off in to the mountains" as I described it. I think it wasn't until after about 10-15 minutes of gameplay that I realized the girls were not deviating from the plan. They knew <i>exactly</i> what their responsibilities were and it was displayed very clearly. Build team knew we had to build a stone house with beds for sleeping and chests for storing resources. Food team built a wheat farm close by that was near a small body of water for irrigation. Resource team found a big entrance to a cave and constructed a stairwell to safely enter and exit.<br />
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Our process was running smoothly. However, did I mention that I had turned off day/night, weather, and monsters?<br />
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In the interest of not overwhelming the new players, I tweaked the game settings so that there was no immediate threat to them from the night cycle. They were aware of this and it seemed to be working well for everyone. No monsters meant not having to watch your back while mining iron deep down in a cave and Creepers weren't going to blow a hole in to the side of our safe-house.<br />
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Night and day mode was to be turned on once we all felt we had the proper provisions to defend ourselves. I gave fair warning and let them know I was turning it all on. It was the middle of the day (in Minecraft time) so it wouldn't be until nightfall that the zombies would come out. Remember, though, that one Minecraft day is only 20 minutes so at best we had 10 minutes before the threat of monsters was real.<br />
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"Oh nooo.. CREEPERS!!! AND ZOMBIES!!! HELP!!!"<br />
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Not everyone was prepared for this. Some knew what to do and others didn't. I was certainly prepared with an iron sword and did what I could to defend our group. I had them all get inside the safe-house so we could fight them off through the doorway which, unfortunately, only had wooden doors at this point which can be destroyed by monsters. The zombies knocked one of them down which left us with a major problem. In the end, we managed to survive our first night without any casualties.<br />
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"The sun is coming up. Everyone back to work!" I joked with them about it being their "job."<br />
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Near the end of the day, we had an exciting moment in which one of our newer players exclaimed "I THINK I FOUND DIAMOND!" Of course, this has everyone's attention so I asked her to collect it if she could and bring it back to me immediately so I could keep it safe.<br />
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Not even a minute later she shouts "I fell in the lava and I don't remember how I got there!"<br />
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I used this as an opportunity to explain that they should <i>only </i>be traveling through the caves in groups in order to defend each other as well as collect the inventory of a fallen player. Unfortunately for this girl, falling in lava means your items are destroyed too. She had to start over completely. They were beginning to see the real consequences of not planning carefully.<br />
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It was quite a letdown, but we were nearing our completion time of 3:15PM anyhow. I had them all re-surface and meet at the safehouse. We all logged out and packed up to go home for the weekend.<br />
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"Thank you Mr. Rowley!!!" they all told me as they walked out of the room.<br />
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No. Thank <i>you, </i>Garrison students, for letting me play such a fun game at work!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>Day 3</u></b></span><br />
The weekend gave me a great deal of time to ease my anxiety surrounding the course and to find ways I could improve our system. Communication became noticeably more difficult on Day 2 since we had a full roster. Build and Resource teams were requesting food by yelling across the room over the sound of everyone else's chatter and it simply was not effective. I thought I would try and have them utilize the in-game chat channel to supplement their needs for communication without sacrificing speed.<br />
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"What can we do to improve our system?" I asked.</div>
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A group leader raised her hand: "We should use the chat to request supplies between groups."</div>
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She took the words right out of my mouth. We have the benefit of two communication channels since we are playing in the same room. A typical online game of Minecraft doesn't provide that. </div>
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"I think it would help to make chests for certain items and mark them with signs so we all know where to find everything." exclaimed one of the food team members.</div>
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Done. Each team would divide their respective supplies and resulting products in well-labeled chests.</div>
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The resource team leader chimed in, "Now that we have plenty of iron, let's upgrade to iron doors, buttons, and pressure plates so the zombies can't break in.</div>
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"Great! That will also prevent Ms. History teacher from breaking our doors too." I think I got a few laughs from that.</div>
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I'm sure there could have been more ways to improve, but this was a good start. We resumed in the same place we left off yesterday.</div>
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Up until this point in the course I felt everything was going very well. It wasn't until about halfway through the day that I had a realization that some funny things were afoot. Items and resources were seeming to disappear out of chests and furnaces and, despite being questioned about it, no one seemed to offer any explanation. Food was expected to be consumed regularly as we all need to maintain our level of hunger, but iron ingots were missing in large quantities yet they weren't stored in any of our designated chests and production of iron tools had almost halted.</div>
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In order to rectify this, I risked my own well-being to enter a cave that no one had been using in the hopes of gathering iron. Maybe the caves they were exploring had simply been depleted of resources which would explain the decline in iron production. I came across a large vein of iron and made my way back to the village to build tools and weapons for everyone.</div>
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The build team's leader shouted to another student, "Where did you get that iron armor?!"</div>
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To see what all the commotion was about, I teleported to the student in question. She was indeed decked out with a full set of iron armor. This requires a total of 24 iron ingots. I could have built plenty of tools with that quantity.</div>
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When pressed for answers as to where she got the ingots, she offered little explanation and only said she had kept it in a chest next to her bed. In the interest of preventing further conflict, I decided to drop the subject and move on.</div>
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"No one on our team has any food and there is none in the chests!" Said the resource team leader.</div>
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The food team assured everyone they were still producing food as quickly as always and, in fact, had started a pig farm to further expand production rates. Why, then, are we continuously running out of food? </div>
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Without making it obvious as to what I was trying to investigate, I would subtely ask each player at various intervals "Do you need any food?" and, if they said no, I asked what they had and how much. It seemed as though they either had no food or they had quantities of food much greater than what would be considered reasonable for one player. I asked all of them to be more mindful of how much they take out of the chests and to limit themselves to as much as they think they need to last them before they return home. Whether or not this had any effect on their decisions I am not certain.</div>
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"I FOUND DIAMOND!" The resource team leader shouted.</div>
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"Bring it to me and I'll hold on to it until we get enough to make some tools." I said. She brought me 4 diamonds which was enough to build one tool, but I wanted them to first find more.</div>
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Unfortunately for this day, I had to cut the class about 20 minutes short as I was being summoned to resolve issues pertaining to my normal duties. Since the History teacher had to leave about halfway through class, I asked a teacher down the hallway to watch them until the class was originally scheduled to end. They just loaded up vanilla Minecraft and played for the remainder.</div>
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On this particular day I agreed to give my boss a ride to his mechanic on the way home from work. He asked about the class and we had a lengthy discussion about the events. I was feeling defeated due to the conflicts that arose and the backwards progress we seemed to experience. However, he made a comment related to the change in the players behavior that gave me a different perspective on the whole thing.<br />
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"You realize you've just described Communism, right?"<br />
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I was baffled. From the beginning I was encouraging this entire society to work for "the betterment of the people" and apparently I was playing the role of Stalin. I favored my team leaders and neglected the rest of them. I was trying to make things "fair" when I instead caused disparity between effort and reward. The players began to feel cheated as I recalled hearing comments like "I'm doing more work than her" or "She has better items than I do."<br />
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As I wrote this post, I decided to read about the characteristics of communism and our virtual society included just about all of them. Rapid industrialization, centralized state, collectivization, classless, moneyless, and common ownership. We were all working in one of three 'industries,' there was only one city being built, all of our collecting efforts were done as joint enterprises, there was no such thing as social class, we had no currency, and everyone shared the some property that no one technically owned. No one was able to attempt private ownership without the fear of being vilified by their peers.<br />
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<b>I unknowingly started my own virtual communist society.</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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To wrap my head around this was a bit tough considering I was already overwhelmed enough by the experience thus far and now didn't know what to expect as a result of my misguided intentions. What would the faculty say about this? Do the students even realize this? Why the heck didn't I see this coming when I thought of the system?</div>
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It really didn't matter. The last day of the course was to come and I just had to go with it as it came to me. Who knows? Maybe the kids will get a good laugh out of Mr. Rowley's blunder.</div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: large;">Day 4</span></u></b><br />
2:00PM was our cutoff time for the day since we were scheduled to meet as a group in the auditorium to present what we experienced during minimester. It wasn't until that morning that I received an email asking if I would be willing to participate and if I even had anything in mind to present. At this point I really had no idea what we could possibly show considering I completely scrapped the Creative Mode portion of the course, therefore leaving us without a completed project, and would be left with simply floating around our makeshift base and explaining what we did. Not to worry: I've been 'winging it' this whole time so why not wing it with the presentation, too?<br />
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We all met on time and the girls were seemingly in the swing of things as they all started up MinecraftEdu and waited for the server to go up without me asking them to do so. I told them I needed just a few minutes of their time to review some things and then we would go right back in to Survival Mode.<br />
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"After a rather lengthy conversation with Mr. Gephardt yesterday, it has come to my attention that I have unintentionally created a society based on ideals that already exist. Can anyone tell me what kind of economic structure we have set up here?"<br />
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Our build team leader's hand shot up before I could finish my question: "Communism!"<br />
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The whole class shared a laugh as my face turned beet-red from the embarrassment. She was right and, judging by the swiftness of her response, she knew this well before I did.<br />
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"Can you explain to my <i>why</i> this is a communist society?"<br />
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"Because everyone works for the same reward, but not everyone works as hard as each other." She explained.<br />
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"Exactly. And what kind of problems did this cause?"<br />
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She replied "Some people were hiding resources and making their own tools and armor without asking for permission."<br />
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I decided to spare them the more detailed lesson (even though my lesson would have been very limited) and moved on. Now we all knew what system we were using and could understand the disputes and problems we saw. The student with the set of iron armor felt as though she was more experienced and hard-working so she deserved more gain than others. I don't see this as a problem. I see this as students doing what they can to <b>survive</b> in the game. The same exact thing would have happened in a real-life Communist society.<br />
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We stifled our laughter and sat down to resume our game. The game initiated around 12:45 which only allowed for about an hour and fifteen minutes of gameplay. I told them we would have to stop early to write our reflections and then head to the auditorium so the attitude toward the game changed rather quickly. We were no longer specifically concerned with resources for the long-term and spent more of our time in risky endeavors like getting deeper in to the caves. The whole concept of communism seemed to drift and the system seemed to fall apart.<br />
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Luckily, one of the girls came across a good amount of diamond which left us with a large enough quantity to craft a few diamond pickaxes. I collected the diamond, crafted the tools, and gave them to our resource team. The resource team leader took it upon herself to find Obsidian blocks (which can only be mined using the diamond pickaxe) in order to construct a Nether Portal.<br />
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Now, I've never been to The Nether, and I had to ask the class what it was. It was essentially described to me as "hell" and I would soon find they weren't kidding.<br />
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In order to construct a Nether Portal, you need Obsidian blocks and Flint & Steel. You build a frame of Obsidian to outline the portal, then use the Flint & Stone to ignite the portal. At that point, anyone can walk through the portal and teleport to The Nether.<br />
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Once the portal was constructed and active, I froze everyone in place and gave them each a full suit of diamond armor, tools, and swords. We only had 15 minutes left so I figured giving everyone free reign in The Nether would be fun. It was indeed fun, but it was also terrifying.<br />
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You are immediately dumped in to an underworld filled with flames and lava pits which is what I would imagine hell is like. Not only that, but there are a new set of monsters to fight. One monster in particular gave me trouble: the Ghast. It's a massive floating white blob adorned with tentacles that emits an awful screaming sound while it relentlessly spews fireballs at you. I'll admit that I sort of screamed like a girl.<br />
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"Mr. Rowley! Use your sword like a baseball bat to hit the fireballs back at him!"<br />
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I tried. I <i>really</i> tried. It's no wonder I was a better fielder than hitter when I played baseball as a kid. I was bested by the Ghast's barrage of fireballs and had to retire. The girls continued on without me. Had we been allowed a little more time, we may have ventured in to The Nether far enough to find something even more terrifying than the Ghast. But, for now, that was enough for me.<br />
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To everyone's disappointment, I teleported us all back to our safehouse in order to log out safely. Our world was saved to the VM and I shut down the server. We marched down to the auditorium to present our experiences.<br />
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I had the three team leaders present using our laptops on the projector to give a visual reference. The entire Middle School was present including faculty. One of the team leaders started off by explaining what our goals were with collecting resources and crafting while the next went on to detail the farming system and how we managed to fend off monsters. Up until this point I had not said anything so I interrupted briefly to see if I could get them to explain our economic system.<br />
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The build team leader chuckled and said "Oh yea, and Mr. Rowley had us in a Communist society!"<br />
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Again, a few more laughs, particularly from the faculty this time. She gave a brief explanation of why we thought this was the case and moved on to our experiences in The Nether. For the most part, people still seemed a bit confused, but they were more so intrigued by the game. Five minutes simply isn't enough to explain Minecraft and what we had done during minimester.<br />
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To me, though, it was a fantastic opportunity to test out the game at our school and the group I had working with me couldn't have been any better. What I originally had planned for them was entirely forgotten. I thought letting the students decide what they wanted to do was probably better than any plan I could have devised. They got their chance to take control and show their knowledge about something that a lot of people do not understand: <i>how to play Minecraft.</i> I know when I was in Middle School I would have loved to show the adults and my peers what I knew about video gaming, but I feel the stigma surrounding video games in that era wouldn't have allowed for much more than Number Munchers or Math Blaster, both of which I played quite a bit in school. Now, over a decade later, there exists a kid-friendly video game that is appealing to parents yet serves as a platform for educating students in a vast number of ways. There's not much else you could ask for.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16108825767928684508noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6448007434574841645.post-57797668389346855052014-01-31T19:20:00.003-08:002014-02-07T09:58:31.232-08:00Minecraft's Introduction to Garrison Forest SchoolBack in November I found myself having more and more conversations with faculty concerning how to use Minecraft as an engaging educational platform. Many of the students already played Minecraft outside of school and I had noticed this only shortly after I began my first full-year here in 2012. Oftentimes while working on a student's laptops I'd see a shortcut for Minecraft or Steam and it got me curious as to the number of students who might identify themselves as gamers. More specifically, what games are they playing and why? As a lifelong gamer, this put a thought in the back of my head that maybe one day I'll ask to start an after-school gaming club or maybe teach programming courses as this could be a similar interest for these types of students. Instead, I ended up with <a href="http://www.minecraftedu.com/" target="_blank">MinecraftEdu</a> as my platform for gaming education. Thus far, it has been received extremely well by the school which I hope will pave the way for even more educational gaming.<br />
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Garrison Forest School, for any readers who may not know, is an all-girls' K-12 independent school with a coed preschool. If you are anything like I used to be, you might think there is a large disparity in the number of female gamers versus male gamers. This is not the case. I was more than delighted to discover statistical analyses showing the genders are represented almost equally. Some suggest the current number of female gamers constitutes as much as 45% of the gaming community which is rather far off from what I would have figured. Other studies seemingly explain why this misconception exist and it turns out that the <i>real</i> gender disparity is with the excessive numbers of male characters in video games compared to female characters. That topic, however, is to be saved for another day.<br />
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Conversation surrounding Minecraft was becoming more frequent in the Lower and Middle Schools and it wasn't long before I was approached about running a course for the Middle School Minimester. One week is designated in January where normal academic routine is scrapped and various courses are offered to the students. The focus is less on academics and more on creativity and fun with topics that wouldn't normally be covered in class. Cooking, photography, film production, and even pickle ball are available in either the morning or afternoon. Minecraft was added to that list practically at the the last minute which left me with a little more than two months to learn the game, set up the local server, and prepare for a whole week of activities. With a background purely in IT, I was a bit overwhelmed and anxious about everything.<br />
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Lucky for me there are people like Joel Levin, Santeri Koivisto, and Aleksi Postari who comprise a team of software developers known as <a href="http://www.teachergaming.com/" target="_blank">TeacherGaming</a>. They are practitioners of Game-based Education and developed MinecraftEdu as a way to bridge the gap between teacher and student, game and learning platform. As far as I can tell, they are the first and seemingly only group to offer something like this to the public and it comes at an <i>extremely</i> reasonable cost. I contacted them after spending only a short period of time watching their informative videos and inquired about educational licensing. They were quick to respond, process the order, and provide the MCEdu software as a packaged download. The server was up and running the day after I received the email concerning the download, but I had only spent a moderate amount of time at home playing the game and would need to get more up-to-speed.<br />
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Two 8th grade students seemed to be particularly avid Minecraft players as I had seen the game on their laptops during Tech Time and continued to hear them talking about the game here and there. I asked a handful of teachers about them and it had pretty much confirmed my suspicions that they play the game very frequently at home yet they are both bright students. Perfect, I thought. I'll see if I can enlist their help to give me a crash-course in what's "cool" in Minecraft. I didn't need to learn the mechanics of playing a first-person PC game as I had started that when I was a kid with games like Doom. No. I needed to understand the perspective of an 8th grader playing Minecraft and, more importantly, the perspective of a <i>girl</i> playing Minecraft. It wouldn't be much of a question for me if they were 8th grade boys as I can recall myself at that exact age playing Half-Life for hours and hours and would easily be able to translate that to Minecraft. These two students were essentially going to shape the directive of the course so that I didn't end up creating something the class may find unappealing.<br />
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I scheduled a time after classes were over one day to have them meet in the Media Room and simply tell me what they like and what they would like do during the course. The level of enthusiasm and eagerness to help me was incredible. It was almost as though they couldn't catch their breath between telling me stories about their adventures, structures they created, and vast selection of available mods and plugins. Maybe, I thought, I was in way more than I bargained for, but after a few meetings we planned to do two of the standard gamemodes: Creative and Survival.<br />
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Survival Mode pits the players against the pressures of the randomly-generated world in which they must gather food, craft weapons and armor, build structures for shelter, and, when the sun goes down for the night, fend off the monsters. There are numerous ways to play survival mode, but I decided the most appropriate way to have them play Survival Mode was to delegate an experienced player to each lead one of three groups with various tasks: Food Collection, Resource Mining, and Building. It would be a good teamwork exercise while allowing them to socialize and enjoy the game in its "vanilla" state as they would play at home.<br />
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Alternatively, Creative Mode is known as a "sandbox" style gamemode such that players have immediate access to the entire inventory and can build with no restrictions; the world is theirs to shape. For this gamemode I wanted to have them re-create the Middle School building within our world using floor plans I acquired from the maintenance team. I already had the floor plans for the Marshall Offutt building with which I was nearing completion and I spent a great deal of time developing an in-game measurement scale that we would use for the MS building. In my mind, if Minecraft continued to happen at this school, eventually we would be able to build a full replica of the campus for the students to explore.<br />
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By this time, we had just returned from Christmas break and the minimester was scheduled for the third week of January. Some time in between I had been invited by another teacher to attend a Minecraft Workshop in DC which proved to be very informative and gave me a bit more confidence since so many other schools were wanting to try this. We <i>must </i>be on to something good here. The amount of buzz coming from the students <i>and</i> faculty combined with the quickly expanding amount of online content suggesting positive benefits from Game-based Education was surely pointing us in the right direction. However, no amount of research or practicing the game could fully prepare me for a week of playing video games. With kids. <b>At work.</b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16108825767928684508noreply@blogger.com2