Technical drawing

So for the next year we will try to have a new course to the Business Information Technican (datanom) students. We call it "technical drawing" where we want the students to have a clue of different diagrams and how to produce them in 2D (paper/pencil and maybe some easy digital tool).

The next step, to make them think in a 3D way is to use Minecraft.

And yes. 

I know.

There's better 3D tools, if you want to do 3D, but hey!

First you have to win your students!

First you have to catch their interest!

At the moment we have way too many students playing games during classes. If we take control over one of the games I believe they find the class so interesting they want to participate. 

You have to make your lessons more interesting than games, and so fun they (the students) don't want to do something else but listen to you.

Then, you could apply a more advanced tool: 3D Studio Max or Blender. 

But if you start with a tool way too advance you will loose half of the class immediately, and we're trying to avoid that, remember?

You shouldn't need a course or two just to produce simple 3D stuff. After all, we just want them to try to practice think (and experience) 3D.

Why do something complicated when you can do it easy?

Keep It Simple Stupid!

And I believe one of those ways could be the Minecraft way!

First project about to end

My first Minecraft project is about to end and now I have to sum up what we have learned and what Minecraft could be used to (in my school). And that's a lot. My participants had two goals to reach: build up their school and build a city, if possible - the Future City.

Unfortunately, 16-18 years old are a bit too old to apply sustainable development, ecological thinking and recycling. The only thing that they actually started to think about was green energy, like solar or water. But on the other hand, that gives us a chance to really use Minecraft as a pedagogy tool to explain all this and connect it to chemistry and physics (and biology that you don't read at a upper secondary vocational institution in Finland).

And now the goodies. two of my students have made documentations about this first project as their final project (before their exam). That's really awesome! This first movie is a big one and it contains both projects. The first 8 minutes is about the building process and the ready school building. The other half is the documentation of our city.

My students said they wanted to have the whole documentation in one place and therefor the "second part", like after 8 minutes, is the same as this (below). But I do think this version has better quality, or it could be just me. Funny fact: the indoor swimming pool and the bookstore in the end of the movie are created by my 5 yo daughter AquaVera.

The hospital itself is so fantastic it deserves to be seen as a stand alone clip.