A Great Lesson!

Okay, so based on last unit's lessons, I adapted a few things. Once again I decided to go with the maze idea, as it seemed to be popular with the kids and it turned out to be very efficient. However, I also decided to combine the Addition and Subtraction unit that this new map was designed for, with the same number statues as in the Place Value map so that the kids could revise what they'd learned during that unit.

In this week's maze, they would go through the tunnels like last time, but in the rooms there were two separate statues with a sign in between. On this sign, the was either a '+' or '-' sign. They then had to work out the two numbers shown by the statues and work out the answer to the question shown.

Some changes to the maze were made to make the lesson go better. I made it a lot longer. Last week's was five questions long and this week's was 12.

This picture was taken after I was about half way done, so imagine this about two times bigger and that's about how big the whole thing was. Also, there were no traps in this maze. Whilst they were a bit fun, they proved to be more trouble than beneficial to the exercises last week, as the kids don't yet have amazing coordination with the game. Moving forward and turning is sort of the limit for them. This made the lesson go smoother, and less people were unhappy. But, so as to have something inconvenient for them (which encourages thinking about the question properly), I made it so that when you get a question wrong, you go all the way back to the beginning. This meant that no one wanted to just guess answers. I did feel a bit bad for one kid who got to the last question in about five minutes and then got it wrong and had to do it all again, but I guess that's just the way it goes.

Just like last time, there was a free area at the end for those that finished quickly, but only about four people made it there this time.

In terms of how the lesson went, I feel that this week was amazing! Probably the best yet! Everyone was concentrating so much and trying really hard. I think it helped that this time they had been taught about the topic in mind before today's lesson so many were very confident to begin with. It may have also helped that we had a lot of student teachers from the university with us; more man-power made things a lot easier!

I guess that's all for now until next week. This was the last map and next week will be the last lesson that I teach. Then all of March and the end of this month will be dedicated to making the video for the project fair using all the video footage I have recorded. I realised at the weekend that over half of my 1 terabyte hard-drive has been taken up with footage for this project. As soon as I have the video I'll definitely be deleting all the raw footage. Anyway, until next week, see ya later! :D

Best One Yet!

Today's lesson was just amazing! I could tell when I was making it that it would be a good lesson but today just proved it. The idea was a maze with different rooms that had a statue in them. These statues were made of diamond and iron blocks, which represented tens and units. Then, based on the statue, the students had to find the correct answer and continue through the maze. However, there were booby traps along the way which mostly killed the students and sent them back to the beginning.

You can see that it looks quite complicated but from the inside it was quite simple and the kids definitely seemed to enjoy it. Let's hope that next week's group feels the same way.

Also, my supervisor came to today's lesson and seemed very happy with the game, the way it is used and the lesson so I'm very happy about that too.

I think for the next unit, I will also use the same kind of idea. I feel that last unit's method didn't really work well and this way seemed to work a lot better. I will probably make the whole thing a lot bigger as many today finished within ten minutes but I think the maze idea works best.

My project seems to be going very well at the moment; I don't feel too stressed by the whole thing. Soon I will probably be working on my report a bit more but that isn't due for a long time! I hope that all keeps going well as I'm coming up to the end of the practical side of my project. Other than that, bye for now!

A Bit Better...

Okay, I had my other Addition and Subtraction (bridging 20) lesson today and I have to say it did go quite a bit better than last time! The lesson went a lot smoother and it did help to have another assistant teacher to help the Special Ed. students. I wouldn't exactly say that they ALL understood what to do better than last week's group but there was a noticeable difference compared to last week. Also, I think it helped that my mum went over everything in more detail last week in class, so the students this week already had a better understanding of what to do. The classroom discipline was better (except for a few kids) and I think that helped too - last week's group were quite restless for some reason.

From what I can tell, this week's group understood how to lay out the answer to the addition questions better and they were a lot quicker to grasp the idea as well.

This was supposed to be the general idea to show the answer in tens. This child made this first time from what I remember, which shows that he understood the concept very well.

I have a one week break now before the last two sets of lessons and then after that there will be no more MinecraftEdu lessons. This is because I will be using March to work more on the report and then the video of all the recorded stuff for this project, which I will present at the fair in May.

Until I start making the world for those lessons, that will be about it... See y'all soon!!!

Just a Short Update...

So as I stated in my previous blog post, I had a MinecraftEdu lesson today. Unfortunately, and I don't know if this was just me, but, I don't feel like the lesson went all that well. People were very restless but also I don't feel that the kids got as much out of the lesson as some previous lessons. I hope next week's lesson will be better.

I had the meeting with my supervisor today and he said that all is going okay and that I should keep up the good work, so I am happy with that. He will also be attending my lesson next week where he will hopefully get a better understanding of my project and see what I am using the game and its features for.

As the title says, this is only a small update so this will be it for now. I will see how the lesson goes next week so I can decide whether it was just a bad day today or whether something I did could be changed for the next unit to make things go smoother. Anyway, bye for now!

The New Year Has Brought Work!

Okay, so I set Wednesday aside to work on my Personal Project and I'm happy to say that I got a lot done. I got home at around 14:15 and finished working at around 20:30. I have another MinecraftEdu lesson on Tuesday and I have the world fully ready for that lesson. The new unit is Addition and Subtraction (bridging 10 and 20). The groups will be the same as last time and I will try to keep it this way until the end of the project, so that the groups are familiar to the kids and they will start to build relationships with different people in their class - which is always important at this stage in school.

Now, usually to get to the areas where the kids do their tasks, they use teleporters, however, this time to try something fun and new, they will be going there by minecart.

They will go into these small tunnels according to which one has their name on it from the spawn-area and then see this. I will teach them how to use the minecarts (i.e. right-clicking to get in it and pressing the buttons etc.) and then, as you can just see in the distance, they will be taken to the place where the magic happens!

From the outside, this area looks like this: 

I think it looks pretty cool actually with all the different tracks coming out and I hope the kids will enjoy it too.

Once they get to the next area, the first task is pretty easy. There will be a simple addition question depending on their mathematical ability like so:

... and all they have to do is walk through the right door to answer the question. If they get the answer right, they will be taken to the next area, where the whole group will be together again and in that area they will have to solve an addition problem by placing blocks in tens. When they have finished all five problems in that area, we will teleport the group to the next area where they will have to do the same kind of thing, but in reverse for subtraction. The groups that found the secret diamond in the last lesson, will get diamond pickaxes and those that didn't, will get iron.

If someone gets the first question wrong, they will sadly be taken to the "detention centre" to try again.

When they get the very easy question from this area correct, we will teleport them back to their group. 

As for other news on my project, I have just submitted the first draft of the first section of my Personal Project Report, which is about "The Goal". My supervisor and I will meet on Tuesday - in the break after the lesson - to discuss this and, hopefully, he will have some nice suggestions on how to make that better.

Other than that, not much has happened. Things are definitely getting more serious with this project but at least I have a definite plan ready for the upcoming months. I'll probably update this more on Tuesday/Wednesday evening after both the lesson and the meeting, to get some more news in this journal. Besides that, bye for now!

So Much Win!!!!

Well, even though I did a blog just a few days ago, there is more today after this week.

First of all, the lesson on Tuesday went very well and I can see clearly that the students are really enjoying using MinecraftEdu in their lessons. This was the first lesson where they would work in groups and it worked very well. One group didn't really want to cut down their trees, but they spent a lot of time underground mining stone. Other than that group, the students generally had quite an even spread of wood, dirt and stone.

This is one of the girls in the class cutting down a tree happily. It's good that as the students have finally got a hang of the controls, they can get around to playing the game and really use it properly to learn.

By the end of the lesson most areas looked a little something like this:

... so as you can see most groups seemed to fully clear the main area and started getting right underground to get stone.

Besides all this, there is one more thing that is really interesting that I only really found out about today and that is who my project supervisor is. I got the main 7-9 grade maths teacher who was one of the teachers I wanted most. Now my project can really get going, I can have my meetings with the supervisor and start on the essay.

Other than that, everything is going as normal. The next MinecraftEdu lesson is in about a week and a half so until I start making the world for then I probably won't be posting here much.

So Much To Say! So Much News!

So a lot has happened while I haven't been updating this blog but that's because of me taking a break off of MinecraftEdu lessons while there's been a break between units and because of not much happening in general about my project. However, over the course of this week just gone and this week to come, a lot has and will happen based on my project. This week just gone was sort of getting back into the swing of things but it wasn't actually that important to me as it was things that I have already done. Stuff like my Topic Theme and Approach Plan - a form which was supposed to give me a basic idea of what my project would be about, but I had already done that, and choosing my Area of Interaction. This week coming up, however, will be a LOT more important! On Tuesday two things are happening towards my project. Firstly, I am doing the first MinecraftEdu lesson of our new unit - Data Handling - which I will talk about soon. Secondly, I have to hand in my Personal Project Proposal. This will be looked at by all of the MYP teachers (probably on Wednesday) and in their meeting they will choose who each student's supervisor will be. I will probably find out by the end of this week or sometime next week but I do have a few suspicions for who I might get. As I have started my project already, this isn't too much of a big step but it does mean that my project will officially start in the school's eyes and I can begin to do other things with my project like writing the essay and having my supervisor meetings to help improve my project.

As for this Tuesday's lesson, there is a bit more to say. This unit has the potential to be one of the most fun out of the whole project as there is a lot you can do in Minecraft with Data Handling. The part that we are using Minecraft for is Sorting, so they will be collecting materials and then sorting them into different chests. The materials that they will collect will be dirt, wood and stone.

Not only will this be the first MinecraftEdu lesson of the new unit but this will also be the first lesson where they don't work by themselves. To start to try and do some teamwork building they will be in groups, working together to collect more materials than other groups. This was nicer for me to build not only because it was cool to be trying something new but there was less to build!

I am quite happy with this week's world and I have tried to integrate the Teleport Block again. All the students will spawn in the same area but then they have to find the sign which has their name on it both to get teleported to the right area and then to see who else is in their group.

You can see here that it is definitely less to build then all 20 odd lanes like I had in previous worlds. At the end of each of those areas there is a friendly message telling each member of the team what to do.

The idea is that they will walk on top of the teleporter and it shoots them off to their area. Now hopefully, if they read the message properly, they will wait for all members of their team at the other end. If they don't happen to read the pretty sign then the 'Freeze Students' feature may come in handy...

Each area that they are taken to is exactly the same. I used the handy //wand tool to just copy paste the areas around the map. I have some trees, tool chests and general dirt and stone structures that they can knock down and collect.

Usually a superflat world generates so that you have bedrock, two layers of dirt and then a top layer of grass. To make more resources available to collect, I decided to make the two dirt layers stone.

Then, I had an idea that I would do something a bit more fun. In one of the trees in each area there is a chest and in the chest there is ONE diamond.

If the team finds this diamond, the unit after, each member of the team will get diamonds tools instead of iron. I will see how this goes down but I will probably end up doing this for every unit as a fun thing to do.

That is about it for everything except while building this map I did discover a glitch within the game that might need fixing. If you place down a Teleport Block in an area and then //copy and //paste the area, when you right-click on the block in the new area to change the settings, it chucks you off the server. Don't know what the MinecraftEdu team can do about this but I hope if they see this they will take a look at it. You can still //copy //paste areas with Teleport Blocks in them but to use them you have to go around breaking them and replacing them in the right spots.

Sorry for such a long wait for this update but now that my project is really starting to kick off, updates should become more regular.