Category Archives: digital citizenship

EVO_MOOC Minecraft Server – Survival

Posted on by
1

There I was just minding my own business, playing my video games in my lounge room at home, when I suddenly found myself in a brand new world which was totally unfamiliar to me. As I began looking around I noted a very hilly area with some trees and, far away in the distance, a barren landscape of sand. I started walking and soon spotted a large herd of horses and some donkeys – lots of different colours! I wondered if I could find an apple or some carrots to maybe entice one of these to become my new mode of travel! I saw a few buildings and some garden plots and quite a number of torches. Not wanting to intrude on anyone’s home, I kept on walking until I came closer to the hill dotted with trees.

Once I had made it up the steep climb without falling off the narrow ledges on the hillside, I started pounding the trees with my bare hands – it really hurt but I desperately needed to collect some wooden logs – without them I would be a sitting duck for any predatory animals that I might stumble across. Once I had collected enough wooden blocks I found a way to check my whole inventory and found the means to build a crafting table! Once I had created this I collected some more wooden blocks and made some planks and sticks and then created a wooden pick axe. It was getting dark but luckily there were some torches dotted around the landscape so I decided to start walking towards them to see what else I could find. I needed to find some resources so that I could make some more tools and start collecting some food; I had just eaten half an hour ago but  I didn’t know this area very well and I thought I’d better be prepared!

As I approached an overhang it started to rain and a violent thunderstorm rumbled around the hills. Flashes of lightning lit up the landscape and I decided to duck for cover. Not knowing whether anything inhabited the caves below, I decided to play it safe and stay under the overhang near the open sky. Once the storm abated, I again started exploring and ended up in a sandy landscape with lots of square-shaped cactus plants. I started collecting whatever I could find. I walked for a long, long way but still hadn’t found many food sources except one unlucky chicken – which of course I could not eat raw – as everyone knows raw chicken can make you very ill. I would rather starve than die from food poisoning! Night was again approaching, so I started heading back towards the torches on the horizon. Close to the river I found some sugar cane and then, to my surprise, I discovered a herd of cattle. By this time, of course, I was ravenously hungry. I stood still until the dawn reappeared – those hunger pangs were killing me if I extended too much energy in the dark!

Once the sun was rising, I started after the cattle. Luckily my first pick axe was still useful and I managed to gather around ten pieces of raw beef and some leather and other odds and ends. I ventured into a few caves to try and find some other resources – I needed to cook that steak – I was getting anxious because I couldn’t find fruit and vegetables and I needed to cook the meat. I made a return sweep of the area and suddenly found a little hut with a small garden plot next to it. There were no signs to identify to whom this abode belonged. I decided to take a look inside and found a furnace. Imagine my relief! I took some raw beef and added it to the furnace. Then I thought to myself how hard it must have been to find all of those pieces of coal and the resources for the furnace. There were five pieces of beef on the furnace so someone must have put them there. I took my own pieces back and ate a few to stave off my hunger pangs and then went outside and closed the door behind me. I set up my crafting table and created a couple of signs and a chest. Then I decided I would set the chest, with some of the resources I had collected, outside the hut and leave a sign thanking the person for the use of their furnace – hoping that they wouldn’t mind me using their resource! Perhaps next time I start looking further, I may meet up with some other explorers, find out who set up the small hut and thank them properly!

See my journey here.

I have been awarded the badge for completion of the EVO Minecraft MOOC 2016. See the evidence.

3DGameLab – Digging into Minecraft – More to Contemplate

Posted on by
Reply

Bron Stuckey and I had a great discussion today about the development of digital citizens and digital identity. The point being that currently many students are allowed to go into virtual spaces (games, social networks) which have not developed a sense of community responsibility for the well being of all participants and this often leads to cyberbullying and an atmosphere in which enjoyment is not sustainable.

When I ran the ThinkQuest space at school  we had a “society” in which students shared ideas and worked cooperatively, though they also had the ability to message each other at all times when online. There was a code of conduct introduced for the benefit of all – including what was appropriate and not appropriate to post in this school forum accessed by students aged 7-12. Students were reminded often about the code we had established and counselling occurred when this code was broken. Indeed spaces like Quest Atlantis with its BURST rules and its focus on the development of social commitments interlaced throughout each and every questline, and its monitored chat system, ensured some degree of appropriate behaviour and a spirit of collaboration, though unfortunately I was unable to complete a full trial of this wonderful opportunity within my school.  Read more on QA, and why teacher should care about games, from Sasha Barab here.

These days the stopgap measure is to put in place codes of conduct but do we, as educators or parents and carers, really take responsibility for demonstrating acceptable social networking and digital collaboration to our students? Do we take them into spaces and act as responsible role models so they can see exemplars at work? I think this is something we are all going to have to come to terms with because we owe it to our students to help them become responsible digital citizens. It’s not enough to TELL them how to behave, We have to LIVE the experiences WITH them. This means IMMERSING ourselves alongside our students. SCARY? No, because they often know these spaces better than we do!

Bron pointed me to Anne Collier’s work in the development of digital citizens during one of the quests in 3DGameLab. Her article, Net safety: How social networks can be protective, hits the nail on the head when she discusses findings from recent studies from USATODAY. These studies describe ways in which the protective factors of online groups can happen in those spaces which James Paul Gee refers to as affinity groups. Indeed guilds and forums within MMOGs (Massively Multiplyaer Online Games) have a positive effect on the individuals involved as they in turn respond by helping maintain the codes of practice required to be a responsible member of the online community. I see the tremendous possibilities for developing this atmosphere of responsibility and cooperation between individuals within a Minecraft multiplayer world. As Gee stated “…young people quite naturally function in “teams,” where everybody is an expert in something but they know how to integrate their expertise with everybody else’s; they know how to understand the other person’s expertise so they can pull off an action together in a complicated world.” I see these things starting to happen in our Minecraft group already and it is only early days.

As Bron says in her 3DGameLab Quest “Learners need to be in spaces to exercise and experience citizenship and practice positive norms and they need to do that in spaces with trusted adults like us!” This is a LIVED curriculum.