Possible Teacher Inquiry...

My PRT blog has slowly become what appears to be a Minecraft obsession blog. I am strongly considering making this my teacher inquiry for the year. I am going to use my blog to pool together all the resources I am finding to begin this inquiry.

I am still thinking about what it is I want to find out. 

• What are the learning opportunities?
• Can Minecraft be integrated across the curriculum?
• Would the attendance of students increase if this was integrated into the classroom?
• Can this game be utilized appropriately to improve students academics? 
• Can we enhance student voice through Minecraft?

Resources:

Minecraft Guides

Minecraft in School

Minecraft Discoveries

Learning in Minecraft - the Massively @ jokaydia Guild

How did we get hooked into Minecraft?

Our journey with Minecraft at Mokoia Intermediate has only been brief, but we are certainly heading towards bigger things.

We began with only a Minecraft club which wasn't very big and ran one lunchtime a week last year. As Minecraft became more of a phenomenon so did the eagerness to join. Lunchtime became lunchtimes and a few students become too many for the limited server space we had.

Our DP then decided to dedicate the spare server we had to being a Minecraft server (this stopped a lot of the lagging and crashing of the game), this server allows for 60 people to be on at one time. At the beginning of this year our school introduced an arts block. During this block each teacher is allowed to choose their own specific focus within the arts curriculum and run this every Friday. Arts block was a huge success and Minecraft was definitely one of the more popular options. When we ran it again this term we got a shock, 86 children wanted to join up (this is huge when our roll is a little under 300). Unfortunately with only 60 spots we have had to have a waiting list. Instead of one teacher taking this it is now two of us.

Running Minecraft with 60 students (mostly boys) would sound like a nightmare to some, however it completely runs itself. Students who are experts become the teachers and the students who are beginners want to learn from other students. As a teacher I just ensure everyone is safe and happy.

As I learn more and more about what you can do in Minecraft I am beginning to set up challenges and goals for the students to build or inquire about. The learning in this game is mind boggling to me. How can a game with such poor graphics provide so much creativity?

I am loving that with the help of my students I am becoming an expert and I am thinking of new ones to embed it into our curriculum.

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Next term our literacy focus is poetry. Below is a video of students reading a poem and recreating the poem within Minecraft. What a fantastic idea.




Another video I stumbled across (mentioned in a post below) was a time lapse video of a community of people collaborating to build an amazing city. As a class we watched this and discussed the idea of collaborating to build an ancient civilization (which is our social studies focus next term), I then took this idea next door to the Year 8 digital teacher who immediately wanted to jump on board. We as two classes are going to use Google Docs (for the planning) and minecraft to construct an ancient civilization . We are going to trial this as being student led and facilitate when necessary. Very exciting!!

Minecraft Lesson Ideas

I have been scratching my head to think of all the learning opportunities I can utilizes Minecraft for. I decided that it was time to jump onto the VLN and check out some of the Minecraft forums and discussions. I feel like I have hit a goldmine of teachers with like minded thinking. I am a very give it a go teacher and love trialing new programs and activities within my classroom.

One of my students wrote a very interesting reflection on her experience with Minecraft - Kayleigh (Minecraft: What is the learning?). I am often reflecting on the learning experiences we do as a class and I am beginning to encourage my children to do the same. I like them to recognize the learning they are doing and take the initiative to further this themselves. My mentor made an interesting comment about how sometimes the learning we are intending to occur is not always the learning that the students achieve. 

Lesson Ideas (Love these, I have listed below the ideas I like the best in each curriculum area) 

Literacy

1. Write a procedural text on how to craft an iron pickaxe
2. Write a story about a character that falls in to the world of Minecraft. Illustrate your story with screen shots from your Minecraft world.
3. Through the Minecraft chat, explain to your teacher who is on another computer how to make herself a crafting table.
4. Your character in Minecraft is called “Steve”. Research why he is called “Steve”
5. Create a 10 question quiz using the Minecraftwiki then swap with a partner. 

Social Studies

1. Recreate a village/town based on a culture you have researched
2. As a team, create a self sufficient community that includes different roles and responsibilities for its members. 
3. Create a set of laws, or a constitution for your Minecraft world. Firstly appoint someone in you class as the king or queen, and have them create the laws. Then after a week or so, create a new set democratically. How are the two sets of laws different?
4. Appoint a King or Queen and give them absolute power for a week. Now try another week but this time using the ideals of democracy.
5. Cooperate with a class in another school/country to build a “perfect world” together. You can use other collaborative tools such as Skype and Google Docs to help.

Mathematics

1. Steve has a very simple house with no windows and just a door 2 blocks high. The floor area of his house is 20 square meters. The capacity of his house (or the internal volume) is 80 cubic meters (each block in Minecraft is 1 cubic meter) What is the least number of blocks Steve could have used to build his house?
   Build Steve’s house.
   Using the same number of blocks,  is it possible to build Steve a house of the same height but with more volume?
2. A village in a Minecraft world is about to start farming. They have hired you to find out what is the most efficient way to get food-they are choosing between bread, cows and pigs. Use the Minecraftwiki to calculate which type of farming returns the most energy (food bars) for time spent farming.
3. Work out the minimum number of blocks you need to make a building with a volume of at least 75 cubic meters. Use Minecraft to test and improve your designs.
4. Work out the ratio of Minecraft time to real world time. (1 MC minute = real minutes?)

Computer Science

1. Use Java to create a mod for Minecraft
2. Create a texture pack for Minecraft

The Arts/Design

1. Compose the lyrics (English) and music for a national anthem for your Minecraft world.
2. Take a screen casting of your Minecraft world (or you could use timelapse screen shots of you building something), then use a program like Garageband to add music to your video. The music should fit the feel of your video. Here is an example

Minecraft ubiquitous learning

Today we read chapter 10 & 11 of 'City of Ember' and my students continued to build the city. We hit a road bump last Friday when we realized our cave wasn't high or wide enough. One of my Minecraft experts took it upon himself to utilise his lunchtime today and Friday to rebuild/configure the cave location so that the students had enough space to build their assigned buildings.

 We had finished the two chapters with 30 minutes to spare so I allowed the students to go for it and just let them have free run to finish their buildings. I then heard an excited yelp of glee when one boy shouted "Miss Downard, I have built a clock and it is attached to a light, did you know you can set the time and we can have the light go on and off whenever we want". My response to this was pure excitement, before I could even put the idea for how we could do this on a larger scale another of my students said "Miss, we can set clocks up with lights all around Ember and then we can make them go off at 9pm just like in the book" another student then jumped in and said "That is going to be really hard because we have to work it out over a 24 hour period". This is when I jumped in and began and impromptu math lesson on time. The students were so engaged because it meant something to them right then and there, and they could then use that knowledge to begin putting it to use.

I knew Minecraft offered learning opportunities but I didn't think it would begin presenting itself with so many awesome real and meaningful opportunities so early on. Here are some awesome screenshots of the 'City of Ember' that the students have built so far. I am already noticing the progression of their skills and creativity within this and I am thinking of other learning areas I can start integrating this into.