Turtle Canyon

Yesterday my principal asked me (you can say 'yes' or 'yes sir') to be a replacement for a sick colleague. The class should do some programming in C++ - and how fun is it to try to have a subject you don't master?

80% of the class also told me, as first thing, they don't know what to do and can't work on their projects without help. And that without even opened their computers. They were determined. It was too difficult. Too hard to even try.

After 30 min of watching them play different games and watch YouTube I asked if they'd like to help me, to test something I've never tested before but I need the experience. Sure, why not? what have we to lose?

Away to the computer lab and Turtle Canyon - A ComputerCraftEdu Sandbox...!

If they don't have any interest of C++ they might be able to learn some code anyway today. I know, Lua isn't the same at all, but hey! If C++ is too hard you might have started a bit too high, a bit too difficult?

Suddenly there was some magic happen, that don't occur normally in this class.

• They were silent.
• They concentrated on the game, plot and mission.
• They stopped to ask when we would have a break.
• They stopped doing other things.
• They ended up tinkering on their phones.
• They began to ask for help.
• They began to collaborate and problem solve.
• They dare to do wrong.
• They stopped to tease, or more exactly: with the turtle's help, they pushed the bully of a precipice...

Most fascinating, as always, the student with diagnosis and usually have difficult to understand, suddenly became normal and started to explain code to the others.

Unfortunately they spend a little bit too much time to quickly get up than to explore, analyze and program their way out. They use the opportunity to accumulate an unlimited number of turtles instead of collecting block.

Yet when they were asked, they could reflect and think. Maybe they used while loop or something else, they realized they still had had to construct some sort of code to be able to come up.

When they came to the surface and didn't find anything, they jumped back down to do it right the second time.

It's okay to fail!

It's a busy time right now as we have Open House, trying to recruit new students to next autumn. Today there will come like 600 students from high school to have a look at our school and our educations. Yesterday when we was promoting our Business Information Technican education (datanom/datanomi) one colleague surprised me talking very warm of Minecraft and ComputerCraft (I'm still not welcome at his lessons btw) as a good introduction to what this profession really is about as you have to be a troubleshooter, either you're IT support or a programmer.

As I thought it's better to actually show what we're doing, or more precisely how I use MinecraftEDU during my courses, I made a videoclip. Of course that was something doomed to fail according to my dear colleagues. Really? A clip? No, you should use a PowerPoint...

Have in mind, this is my "PowerPoint", my words, thoughts and opinions about the education when I try to talk about it and promote it, not my school.

Yesterday there was some groups only with girls and they were a bit afraid of the computers so I told them a story, when I started with my course with ComputerCraftEDU, programming basics, and there was this guy telling me it was too hard. At that lesson also my daughter AquaVera 6 yo attended, and she showed the guys how to use MinecraftEDU and ComputerCraftEDU. And I saw the girls smiled as they understood, it's all about the mindset. She, my daughter, was working as a good example to get the high school girls interested in the education.

My daughter also happen to unfortunately be a perfectionist, failure is not an option! Therefor she surprised me this morning when I told her about this, using Minecraft to learn and she told me:

"Dad, it's okay to fail but you have to try!"

Strange don't you think? It's okay to fail when it comes to games... so why do we not use games in education more???

My on going ComputerCraftEDU course has been very funny. Half the group has been running home as fast as possible and the other half I have had to kick out... Even if the server have had lots of lag, they still sit there. The day before yesterday, Wednesday evening, we couldn't even move around on the server, did it mind this young men? Not at all. It was some delay on the code but he refused to give up.

"The course ends 19:00, it's now 18:49, I still have 11 minutes to go!" And 19:10 I have to drag him out...

Reflection of gaming

I'm preparing my next MinecraftEDU ComputerCraft course and have some thinking going on that I need to get out, clear the system sort of :)

When I play Minecraft with my 6yo daughter (AquaVera), the first thing I can't help think about is all learning that is going on. But, with a second thought, all that enlighten learning wouldn't take place if she were playing alone. And this is not a boy girl issue, it's when you play over generations and learn from each other. 

How can I be so sure? 

Well, best example is "Everyday Minecraft" with Adam Clarke and his son Django. There's no epic mission to slay the dragon and conquer the world, instead there's small epic missions for the day: create a bed (you need to find sheep), start a farm (you need to eat), create better tools, create a proper nice base camp. 

"Everyday Minecraft" should been watching every once in a while of parents and kids as it's very inspiring what you really could achieve with a computer game if you are aware of it. 

We have the same epic goals; yesterday we went out to try find horses so we could start breed puppies and of course, create a stable to them. Now we happened to find sheep as well, so we "had" to take care of them...

In our acquaintance 

there's parents who don't know, understand or even care what their kids play. These kids have most often one primary goal, the epic mission: slay the dragon. This is pity as you could use a game to so much, for an example "The Minecraft Student - Minecraft Mod Review" a great way of learning math!

To be able to "slay the dragon" you sometimes (in games like World of Warcraft) have to collaborate with others, who you trust can do their part as professionals. You have to communicate to be successful. But in the very end, you do it for yourself, to get better gear or whatever. In games as World of Tanks you are a part of a team, where the group is more important but here we talk match and series, as ice hockey or soccer. 

But as long as no one enlighten you, there's no consciously learning going on because you also feel bad when you play more than your parents want. It doesn't matter if it's about kids in my daughters age or my students (+10 years), they still need someone to enlighten the learning to be able to achieve it.

This is kind of my problem at the moment.

There's another side as well (of course): how our students work and behave. I'm sorry, but they really suck at information retrieval. When they hit the very first wall of adversity they give up. If it's not a game... 

I have for a couple of weeks having this course using both MinecraftEDU and ComputerCraftEDU, with a goal to reach out to the first years students (16-18yo) and get them more interested in code by gaming. As I know they're brilliant what comes to problem solve when gaming, I hope they also understand that's an important part during class when you're doing code (or school tasks). Don't give up if it's not working on the first attempt! Besides get them interested into coding I also want them to understand you can (and must do) information retrieval when you code!

This course when using ComputerCraftEDU in classroom has been a truly success! Many students refuse to leave until the lessons end, no matter if the Internet are not working (happened!), when the server is too laggy (happened!) or even if we have problems with the tech (happened!). When I'm ready to give up and tell them it's okay to go, half the class stays with the argument "the course ends at 19:10, we have another 45 min to hope for a miracle!" 

When has that ever happened before?

We have all started the day between 8:00 and 08:30, 10 hours later they still have energy to require we end as scheduled 19:10 (and then I have to literally kick them out!)

They buy the explanation to use a game to learn something, and I can see that information gives them the aha-feeling: I am really learning something useful when I play and when I have played (Confirmation. Enlighten.)

The problem I usually have is when some students who runs own servers comes and want admin, operator access and want to install their own favorite bukkit mods. They have very hard to understand (and accept) there's actually a learning environment, an EDU-version, to their favorite game.

This time I have given them the tools to make code but nothing else as I assume they're lazy enough to want have turtles doing the boring work for them. In the following courses I will have some more specific quests for them like math, thanks to Shane Asselstine (Hawaii) who opened my eyes with thoughts like these ones:

Have them calculate how much wheat they would need to grow to survive for a day. It is harder than it seems. Then how much for a week? How much for a month?

Are there better sources of food that would be more effective? How do you measure the effectiveness? Can you give it data and compare the numbers?

ComputerCraftEDU

The "problem" we face with every day is that all students, one way or another, play computer games. And if your lessons isn't interesting or fun enough, they rather play. So therefor I try to take advantage of games as much as possible. And it's only a problem if that's your opinion, me myself believes it's an opportunity.

As our students needs to have 10 free of choice courses besides their vocational training to get their professional degree, I usually find my chances to run different projects within this field. I'm interested to see what learning occur when you use a game in education, that's why I have a chance to run "Economics with World of Warcraft" and two days ago (Wednesday 26th of November) I started a beginner's course to programming using #MinecraftEDU #ComputerCraft and #CCEdu.

Half of this group will later learn deeper and more advanced code (Java, Python, C++ and more). They all today play Minecraft (that's provided to be on my course). So during 7 weeks I will have them playing Minecraft and hopefully they will also learn some programming skills. The goal of this course is to learn how to crawl as the feedback Shane Asselstine gave me the other week.

My earlier experience of these courses you most likely will have like 6-10 students notified and half of them showing up. I got 20 and 16 turned up, good because I was a bit nervous about it, I only have 19 working computers in the lab...

Sixteen students between 15 and 17 years plus my daughter, 6yo (daycare ain't open in the evenings), a bit of a challenge I must say. But lo and behold! No matter the age difference, they had the same questions, got stuck in the same places and yelled the same opinions about Internet service provider, who of course had a lot of trouble nationally in Finland yesterday afternoon and evening. My daugther, AquaVera, tried the intro to turtles stage by her own and showed the most stubborn student how easy you could make (and learn) code.

My masterplan this time is to first have Introduction to programming with the Land of Turtles world, created by Michael Harvey (can't give him enough credits for the map or hos patience with me). When we have finished the challenges there we will move on to a survival #MinecraftEDU #CCEdu server, I do believe Shane Asselstine when he says humans are lazy of nature. After the first days in game the students will think how to use turtles to do boring stuff for them: chop woods, find minerals, guard the house and more.

The goal of this course is to learn how to crawl (basics of programming) and practice on the key competences of lifelong learning. Nothing more than that, but I do believe that's enough. You see, after only one session (Wednesday) some of the guys started to think how to use this new skills at their own class server and it turned out they now have password protected doors... 

Something they admit not been thinking of before we started the course, and even though they copy-paste the code from a FAQ there still is a learning process going on, and it still very funny (for us both).

Because of the problems ISP had I also told my students after 2 hours they could leave and go home. Six students refused to leave and sat the whole time even though they were kicked out every 10 or 15 min. One student I also had to kick out from classroom because he didn't want to go home at all... And he was very pissed I didn't get him a chance to finish :D

Indeed, they do learn in another way. 

A way we're not used to or fully comfortable with but instead of deny it we could take advantage of it, control it (the gaming) and use it. Something to learn here, right? Well, as this awesome blogpost points out, at least we (teachers) can learn five things from video games:

One of the lessons I've learned of using the map, the Land of Turtles, is I must slow them down and force them to take time in the museum and force them to analysis an own piece of code. Both because everyone has problems to log on the first time and if they don't have it themselves, we have problems with the computers. So I usually share a document as they rarely read (see above and rule no 1) but also a code example they have to find, analysis and describe what it does. And I also block the entrance to the basement and portal.

When using Minecraft in education you will have lots of problems if you're using mediation pedagogy and instead you have to focus on motivational pedagogy, to be a fellow traveler as well as the travel guide so your students keep the focus.

CCEdu and bridgebuilding

A class of 16 students, 7 went home so I only had 9 left. The replacement before me probably was a bit boring. Even though I had Minecraft and they knew it, they left early :(

Ok, so I had 9 students left to challenge with bridge building, MinecraftEDU and ComputerCraftEDU. Suddenly there was 3 groups: 4, 4 and 1 (!). The single one you can't call a group, but he is a couple of years older and if I remember correctly, has dysphasia; blue, red and green team.

Red team

Immediately the red team turned out to be the group with less collaboration and none existing communication. They were more concentrated to build a wall against the other groups than to actually do the bridge building mission.

First one, later two students found a way out of the test area and started to build a bridge. Not a nice one but a working one.

The other two suddenly realized they could leave after completing the bridge so they run away building something similar as a forth team, yellow, just to be able to leave 1 hour before time. The carrot turned out to be leave early :P

Blue Team

The other two teams took the challenge more seriously and followed the steps, tried their best to do a nice bridge (just for fun!) and the one man army continued.

While blue team was testing they ran into some problem which they tried to correct, as a never ending loop (picture below). Second try the guy had connected his remote to the turtle and could stop it before it had went away too long. One of the team members is the one with ADD I've talked about before and this way of making code suits him perfectly, he was as equal as the other members contributed code.

Green team

One man army

Well, he's a bit stubborn and a bit older. He said he would learn more if he could, would be allowed, to do it himself. So I let him to do that. It took a lot of time, the final code had some mistakes but he will continue from home. 

Funny thing with these two students with diagnose, this was the right way to teach them make codes. Both of them turned out to be brilliant programmers just because of the drag & drop in combination you could test all the time what happened.

Today's mindmap

When communication and collaboration works, everything goes (black boxes). When it don't work it creates stubbornness and I, the teacher, has failed. And this last try, teach through a game is not working. On the other hand, nothing works and the problem is more individual, they have no interest what so ever to participate in an education.

I do have lots of experience to the next course in the same area, introduction to codes but with the first years students.

What happened yesterday?

Now when I have started to melt what happened yesterday I thought I should write down the thoughts. So many of my line colleagues has tried but not reached their hotspot. What did I do that was different?

I refuse to think it was the Minecraft because half of the class is not even interested in the game. Or at last, not usually interested but if a teacher tells you to play, then you play. I start to think it was because I made it simple. KISS

When I've talked, or more exactly, tried to talk with my colleagues they just shake their heads and compare my lessons with kindergarten. If I should be a real teacher I should forbid games (dot) (end) (stop talking). 

And I'm doing the opposite, I allow them to play.

And I allow them to play a game that simple everyone can play it.

With a low learning curve, everyone can do it.

Some more open minded colleagues has told me that's easy for me, because I have the knowledge.

Sorry, they are all wrong. 

Knowledge of the game, nah... more of getting experience of the game. Hey! My daughter, AquaVera 6yo, gives me tips every now and then how to play Minecraft. 

Knowledge - wrong.

Know how - wrong.

No, what I'm doing is more scary than that.

It's spelled: D-A-R-E

I know where we're going, I have the policy documents, I have my goals as with every subject or method as you usually have. The method changes; it took a while before I had courage to let go of control, I don't have to master the method (Minecraft) as long as I have control of everything else. 

And the benefits are huge! 

I meet students at their own stadium and catch their interest. Proof that I got yesterday, everyone stopped what they were doing and started to participate in the learning. 

And they realized:

• Learning is fun.
• Learning is multiplayer.

When we went through what they had learned at the end of the day, they told me not exactly, but close enough.

• This was a fun way of learning.
• You tricked us to learn.
• Now I finally understand the WHILE loop.
• I have never before been this active!
• I have had fun!
• It was easy.

ComputerCraftEDU

• "I like this way of construct code better (design view)", the guy who said that has ADD (abbreviation for Attention Deficit Disorder). Finally he understood how to make code and he could also keep up with the others instead of always being the last (which is bad for self-esteem). 
• Another one, with dysphasia (and probably design difficulties) said: "I could check my code by testing all the time". He was learning while testing and swore long chants every time he lost control of the turtle, but give up? not an option!

Summary

They, students of today, learn in an opposite way than we are used to. Face the fact, you should not teach yourself, it is today's youth (the millenium kids) who is your target audience. You have to change your didactics to fit them.

And yes, CAD or Blender gets better graphics than Minecraft, but you have to catch them (and their interest) before they can learn the more advanced stuff. Don't make it harder than it needs to be!

The key words:

Keep It Simple Stupid

D A R E !

We have learned the WHILE loop!

A week ago one colleague became father and, as the rules are in the Nordic countries, left his workplace for three weeks. Of course I'm happy for him, but at the same time a bit pissed because he didn't left any materials to us who suppose to be his replacements. One of the courses, basics of object-oriented programming (python) we're three teachers to share, the other two usually works with C++ and Java so they are more familiar with our problem.

As a remedial teacher I have some knowledge of everything, but to refresh object-oriented programming over a weekend, heeey c'mon... :P

So I've been stressing a lot of this course the whole weekend before I decided to face the problem my own way and go against the flow: what you can't fix with Minecraft ain't worth fixing... So MinecraftEDU, ComputerCraftEDU and the truly awesome map the Land of Turtles!

And yes, I know

• the Land of Turtles was designed for 9-12 yo kids
• Lua isn't object-oriented programming (but kind of reminds of one)

My students are between 18-22, double the age of what the map are designed to. My students should also be the third years students of Business Information Technicans (datanom), but as I understood after the beginning of the week they are not any programmers. 

In fact, none of the teachers in my school has succeeded in learn this group any programming at all, and one of the reasons why is because they have used conventional methods, code code code and nothing else but code.

And here we face on big problem, teachers that don't understand that Generation G (Global) learn in an opposite way than we're used to. Too many learn through games...

The target group:

• 18-22 yo
• Don't know how to code
• Can not analyze code
• Conventional methods don't work
• Can't concentrate
• Makes noise and talks all the time

Selected methods:

• MinecraftEDU
• ComputerCraftEDU

Expectations:

My colleagues hope I fail, the students don't care (they have decided to not listen before I even start) and I'm getting nervous... If my way works, they might have to do the same, so guess what's easiest :P

"The Land of turtles" is in truth an absolutely stunning map, split into small pieces, chapters, lessons. It begins with the turtle museum, two floors of turtles with example code. I had written down all codes (text) and gave them their own code to search, describe and analyze. I thought maybe 15-20 min would be enough.

It took 45 min, mostly because students that age has forgotten to follow instructions, don't read, don't listen and getting confused when the solution does not fall down in their outstretched arms...

As many teacher had told me they can't analyze code, understand what the code does, they did fairly good I must say

Explanation 1: 

"What is happening here: Turtle goes first forward, then up, turn about 180 degrees (right). Then I go through a blank area in the wall, then down and swings about 180 degrees again and goes back to the same place from where it started."

Explanation 2:

"The robot is called up and trough 

turtel.forward = breaking up a block 

turtle.up = turtle goes up a block 

turtle.turnRight = turtle turns to the 180 to the right 

turtle.down = turtle walking down a block 

turtle.turnLerft = turtle pivots at 180 on the left"

When everyone was ready I open the gates to the intro to turtles section where they could start practice. Suddenly they were in the next area a bit too fast (I wasn't ready): Faultline Island.

A chapter that didn't work at all, my students need someone who tells them what to do otherwise they loose their interest. So I teleported them one by one to the Sky Turtle Island and my students started to be creative. They also stopped racing and came up with own goals: nicest code, best code, to win the game/outwit the creator and more.

A block every second spot. Why? He told me he wanted to save blocks for later use...

Same challenge, two different solutions. One goes over and the other through... And the challenge to outsmart the creator: you can't leave the Sky Turtle Island because you're not allowed to build or to jump from the plattform. But you can use your turtle to make a bridge over the fence...

Some stuff wasn't working, as the sandwall which should close behind you when you enter the second floor's new rooms. When we removed the redstone (yellow star) the sand went down and closed the door. Two students entered the room together to collaborate through the challenges. 

After 2,5 hours non-stop working with code, turtles, problemsolving I was totally deflated and wanted to be alone. I had to kick them out and promise we'll continue next week. Before they left we talked about what they had learned. 

• Everyone had learned something.
• All had at least (finally) learned the WHILE-loop.
• Those with dysphasia could keep pace with the other.
• All told me they have, for the first time, actually been doing what the teacher asked for the whole time (!).