I decided to spend some time building a landscaped garden as I have been known to do in SL. I learned a lot about developing terrain from scratch when I completed my adventure map during a 3DGameLab Teacher Camp with Lucas Gillispie. I made mazes in several different types of blocks and had instructions and chests with prizes etc. I documented that on my Flickr stream here at the start and here when I decided to make it a lot bigger. The mountain took me ages as I made it block by block – I didn’t know how to use WorldEdit tools and still prefer the  building block by block method. One thing I found as I built the mountain with the tunnels and caves inside it was that bats started to appear. I looked up information about bats on the wiki here and here as well. Today I made a gazebo and started vines on the sides and expected each side to grow in a similar way. However, the east facing side did not grow while I was inworld. That prompted me to have a look at the Minecraft wiki to see is there was a reason that vines grow differently depending on placement. Fascinating information here! I added this build to my Flickr stream as well.

As part of the requirements for the EVO-MOOC I have started exploring a wider network of participants using Minecraft in education. I have previously mentioned my association with the minecraft experience wiki collated by Bron Stuckey. It is a few years now since we started working in my after school club and I am looking at scaling up some access for other students at school during teaching time. I joined the Minecraft in Education google community and started looking through several interesting posts. The latest news about Microsoft taking over MinecraftEDU has been widely commented upon by many people and this group has provided more insights I had not really considered. I thanked the participants for their thought provoking posts and added what my current situation is at school. It will be interesting to see how my education department’s development rolls out during 2016 as I am sure that some big changes are in the wind as far as having students online etc. Other items posted in this community showed some really interesting focus points such as the importing of 3D objects into Minecraft from Thingiverse after using TinkerCad. I will maintain a watch on this as I think it blends naturally with having students understand how modelling can be effective in lots of different media. This also reminds me that I wish to make sure students have access to OpenSim on our local LAN and prompts me to add to my list of ToDo items when I next speak with my tech people. The same participant in the community also reminded me about Scriptcraft and I started to follow his blog due to his numerous forays into interesting areas. I have also discovered a different server used by Jo Kay called Spigot. The people in the Minecraft in Education Community seem to be very knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to setting up servers and installing plug ins and mods which might be useful. I need to do a lot more research and discussion with those who know more than I!

I have spent the last hour or so checking out a Minecraft Redstone for Dummies book which I purchased towards the end of 2015. I have seen my students develop some interesting build features in community projects over the last few years such as lights on top of buildings, showers and simple machines. I have been wanting to learn more but haven’t really had time to force myself to sit down and watch videos. I learn better by reading and trying things myself. I have worked my way through several short activities as follows: 1. Laying glowstone blocks, attaching redstone wires and a pressure plate. Stand on the plate and the blocks connected will light up. 2. Figuring out that the trail of redstone will go up and down the blocks and across the ground. I added a lever as a switch to turn the blocks on and off. 3. The charge in redstone wires only travels for a certain number of blocks and in one direction. To alleviate the issue I added a redstone block which helps to further carry the charge and allows it to change direction. Apparently you can use repeaters to do something similar – something to try out on another occasion. 4. The redstone block powers any block adjacent to it. I placed one in the middle of 4 glowstone blocks and they all lit up. 5. A redstone torch is a constant power source. Wires running from it will light several blocks. The charge extends out one block. 6. I found out that certain elements will power adjacent blocks without redstone attached – I placed a pressure plate either side of the door to my cabin and the door opened once the plate was activated on either side of the door. I assume the same thing would happen with a lever. I have documented my experiments on my Flickr stream here. I also left some signposts describing the redstone experiments on the server.

Last night I went into my Mojang profile online and changed my Minecraft avatar skin yet again. The one I made during a teacher camp session was very simple but I wanted to try a new outfit! I guess that is something I also love to do in SecondLife and Inworldz. I decided to visit the EVO_MOOC Server again this morning and checked out a colleague’s build and discovered she already knows some redstone building! Thus I decided to start gearing up for the inevitable. I started working in the EVO server to create some basic tools etc just for practice. Then I decided to take myself into my single player survival world that I started from scratch a couple of years ago. When I look there I think I might have cheated a bit and taken in a craft table and furnace. So – I decided to start again and went through and made a few items and gained some achievements. The only way to develop my own crafting speed to match the speed of the students is to keep practising! I had to visit the crafting wiki several times to be able to do any crafting at all!  I learnt a lot in an hour and hope I can remember it all next week when the fun starts! I hope the server changes over to survival mode on Sunday evening as school starts soon! My picture journey continues here.

I finally caught up with the session I missed on Sunday night. Jeff Kuhn presented a lot of interesting information about the wonderful builds people have developed in response to historical events, literary texts and a whole screed of other ideas for developing and designing projects. He also mentioned a few mods I have heard about through previous experiences – Tekkit which has an engineering focus, Computer Craft which allows scripting in Minecraft and of course MinecraftEDU, which I have already installed as my after school club server software. MinecraftEDU will allow me to help teachers set up specific worlds for class projects during the year. My job will be to learn as much as I can to support the maintenance of this server in such a way that student projects are backed up and saved for presentation purposes. The thing I love about all of the game and online scripting communities, such as those which have been centred around World of Warcraft,  Minecraft and Scratch, is the way in which they demonstrate many of the features of the Octalysis Gamification Framework. The James Gee described affinity groups which grow around the games allow participants to really demonstrate aspects of the gamification framework which those “chocolate covered broccoli games” do not. Aspects such as Empowerment and Social Influence are core drives for such affinity groups. In these cases, as Jeff Kuhn describes in the presentation, if we introduce students into the Minecraft server, they will probably become the experts and we the learners. This is not unheard of in gaming guilds and it was the way in which my after school Minecraft server was started! So I have concrete evidence that big G games such as Minecraft actually do support community development based on competence. I also love the way Jo Kay has continued to develop Massively@Jokaydia I aspire to develop the system of challenges and student development that she has been able to support on her whitelisted server. When I visited as a guest, it was as a n00b, which is as it should be! There were a couple of players who had admin titles and they welcomed everyone to the server – I think they were pre-teens! I also admire the servers set up via edurealms by Lucas Gillispie. He also has challenges and encourages teachers and classes to participate in the many projects he has developed in conjunction with people like Steve Isaacs and Peggy Sheehy (WOW in School). Just this morning I discovered some new content which might be helpful to teachers planning to use games in the classroom. The Institute of Play has so many resources to share and they also created templates which are editable if teachers are looking to get a handle on quest based learning through games and designing. I have learned so much in the last few days – sometimes the sheer volume of information is overwhelming and I bite off more than I can chew. However, I remember that in the long run it is for the students!

Well I ventured back inworld this morning to see if anyone was around. Met one participant but didn’t really chat a lot. I found more builds which were in the opposite direction from which I had headed – some of the other participants have been busy! I made a small house and planted a few more saplings. I also figured out how to try on armour as I haven’t really been used to survival mode and thought I’d better figure out how to wear it. Then I tried to remember how to tame a horse – tried both apples to entice the creatures but I think I’m going to need to revisit the wiki pages on crafting, taming, cooking and just about everything else! I knew there was a reason I preferred Creative mode – I guess I just enjoy the creating and exploring of VW rather than the combat side of things. I have noticed this with quite a few of the students in my after school club as well. Some take to combat really easily and would prefer that side of the game rather than the creating side. However, I have seen the sharing of expertise by students with all forms of the gameplay inworld and I think it’s wonderful – it creates a real learning community. Pictures are here.

This evening I visited the EVO_MOOC Minecraft Server and started to explore. There were some interesting builds already in place as well as a village which looked like it was produced through the world seed. The world is flat and is set to Creative mode – though there are lots of mobs around as well. As I had not visited a village before I decided to do just that. I had heard my students discussing trading with the villagers and wondered how it is done. Out of curiosity I right clicked on one of the villagers and up popped a dialogue box revealing that the villager has a particular trade or occupation and that certain items could be traded for. When I looked more closely at the village avatars I noticed they were dressed differently and that this indicated the trade with which they were associated. What an interesting experiment it would be to have students working together in survival mode and building the trading component in to the everyday tasks to be completed by the group. I have seen group dynamics in the adventure game we have played in my after school club and they range from students who like to play solo to eventually become valued members of a community working together to achieve a common goal – survival! I have also seen students develop their skills through helping each other to learn how to create new items just for fun e.g. a trampoline and also out of necessity e.g. armour, weapons and tools. Minecraft can be used across all curriculum areas and it just needs the teacher’s imagination to see the possibilities! My screenshots for this first excursion are here.

During the last 3-4 years I have thought at length about the myriad themes discussed in the EVO Minecraft MOOC readings as can be seen from my previous blog pages and some of the presentations I have made to colleagues at conferences and Teachmeets in my local area. As a lifelong learner I hope to keep on finding and trying out new ideas.  Common themes emerge such as engaging in online spaces, collaboration and discussion with colleagues and using games for learning. Learning in such spaces is ongoing and interactive – though a lot of the time I have spent in online spaces has, of necessity, been on an individual basis due to the time zone I inhabit. However, at various times of the year when I am on vacation I meet educators from across the globe – depending on the hours I choose to be online. To date I have met with educators in World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Second Life and Quest Atlantis – searching for the right place to incorporate into student learning. My instinct now tells me that Minecraft is the vehicle – especially since I have an active server on my school network. However, I still want to incorporate the superior tools in Open Sim as I believe they would greatly assist older students in the understanding of physical properties and the mathematics of 3D shapes and the XYZ planes of a 3D space. There is a whole world of resources centred around Minecraft and I have only just skimmed the surface of learning about how it works – having just this week purchased and tried out the littleBits cloubit tied in with bitcraft – a Minecraft mod – to see how it works through completing the initial tutorial supplied in the bitcraft world. Step by step I feel I am inching closer to having Minecraft accepted as a project space for learning during school time as well as after school. Minecraft accommodates learning across all learning areas and provides a safe space for students in my school to learn about becoming digital citizens and collaborating with others in an “online” community.