One student suggested a walkway (which several of the students pitched in to help with, complete with glow blocks for night time use), signs with directions appeared, pirate ships emerged along with 5* hotels. Evidence of collaboration was everywhere. Genius!ĭay 2 of our server being open showed remarkable progress.
Minecraft iceberg series#
Kenneth solved the problem by putting down a series of glow blocks, which emitted enough light so I could see where he was going – a modern day Hansel & Gretel breadcrumb trail. I could still chat, so typed, “I can’t see where I’m going! Where are you?” Unfortunately, night was falling in our little world, so I could no longer see where he was going. One of the students, Kenneth (G3) wanted to show me his house, so I began to follow him. A mountain top swimming pool was constructed.
Minecraft iceberg how to#
I asked them how to move – they told me to double-click the space bar, and up I flew.įlying high above our world, I saw that it was a hive of industry. I decided to log in to the server at home and see what – if anything – had happened since school finished.Īs soon as I had logged in, I realised I had completely forgotten ALL commands, including, crucially, how to move and how to talk! By guessing that if I pressed ‘t’ it might let me talk, I managed to chat to the few kids that were logged in and were already excitedly talking away (hopefully unaware of how utterly useless their teacher was at that moment). I’m convinced Minecraft has spectacular educational value, but this activity is my own qualitative research experiment. Thankfully I had some of our UWCSEA Techxperts there to help me out.Īnyway, at the end of the first session, I wasn’t sure how things were going to work out. We were setting up accounts and running around madly trying to get everyone into the school’s Minecraft Server ( thank you Redstone Host!). Without further ado, I started a Minecraft activity at school which met for the first time on Monday. It was very clear to me that Rob was onto something pretty spectacular, and we had to get involved! I was lucky enough to spend time with Rob Newberry and members of his Minecraft activity who visited our school to show our Techxperts activity the basics of Minecraft.
And that when we see kids playing games that maybe our first reaction is to say, “Oh well they’re just playing, they’re just kind of wasting time.” There isn’t a sense of even sitting down with the child and asking them… “What’s going on in your head right now?” Because if you sit down and talk to a game player about what they’re doing, an incredible narrative will come out of their mouth about the complex problem they’re working on. There is a long history of understanding games as sort of leisure activities, as a kind of waste of time. I have rewritten this paragraph about 14 times, mostly because I am trying not to sound embittered! I am saddened that the educational potential in games has once again been overlooked.Īs Katie Salen, professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design so eloquently put is: Overheard in the lab: “My Mum says she can’t believe UWC is offering a Minecraft activity.
0 kommentar(er)
