Experiences of MinecraftEDU

New to use Minecraft in education?

I have some experiences to share...

They need a ruler

If you think you as a teacher shouldn't be needed anymore when you add a game you're wrong. I thought so myself, but had to change my attitude after my very first 36 hours in game, the time it took for my students to build up a city and started to argue about childish things (scale of houses, amount of houses, roads and such). And we started the vanilla server on Thursday and Saturday morning I had to clear out some conflicts...

During those first 36 hours they had built what you see in the first 1:40 minutes in this clip. What comes to city building you could use this Swedish site Futurecity.nu and it's lessons plans (lektionsplaner) and use Google Translate on it, that would be enough to get inspiration.

Student democracy works to a certain limit but you as the teacher have to be the president of your new world. Students can be prime minister, minister of transport, minister of education, Minister of agriculture but you can't leave all responsibility to only students!

Your present in the classroom or the virtual classroom have never been as important as now. You need to have them focused on the target and your goals, they need your guidence.

Besides been doing a full scale practice of using a government in Minecraft (without add myself as president) I have also tried to mirror a student group as a company (nuclear power) and I got the same result / experience. 

The emperor Teacher is vital in game!

Small modules rather than a large entity

What went wrong? Well, the whole (task) became too large. They didn't know where to begin and therefor they did anything (else) but what you (as a teacher) had planned or hoped for. 

I once had a modded server with industrial craft, and as that mod enable you to make nuclear power and nuclear weapons I thought that was a challenge they would be interested to solve.

What I thought they should build (picture from here)

What they actually built

First when I stepped in and gave everyone a task to fulfill they started to come closer to my master plan. But I had to make them understand they needed to have builders, workers, woodcutters, guards and more. Expecially when you add a game, a chance to work in 3D, students struggle with the big picture. With that said, they have easier to understand coordinates in Minecraft (3 axes; x, y & z) than on paper (2 axes; x & y), an example here. 

Before they start to build they should have a working gameplan!

The SAMR model

If your biggest challenge is that you're afraid of boring the kids when you start each lesson with "build a model of..." you don't yet have realized the full power of Minecraft.

I know SAMR model is severely criticized but when you use Minecraft in education it's a very good tool to use, I've bloged about it here.

If you only tell your students to "build a model of..." you havn't changed the task enough to achieve more learning. You're only on level two of the SAMR model: augumentation.

You have to change the task, and it's here many teachers start to criticize the SAMR model as you now have to change your course content which, of course, mean more work for you. Deeply sorry, but those teachers are not only lazy but also to blame that students of today loses interest of education. 

As my school now should use the SAMR model, our teacher's usually not come any longer than step 2: augumentation and here's my favourite example. In the mother tongue course you should read a book and write an essay of it, let's check SAMR model:

Substitution

Instead of write the essay on paper, students now write it with Google Docs.

Augumentation

Students collaborate in google docs and are also able to comment each other work.

Modification

Students read the book and build the book in Minecraft

Redefinition

Students roleplay the book story inside Minecraft, make a movie of it and upload it to Youtube. You have to come up with a storyline, you have to document the whole process and while do that you can prove you have understood the book in several ways than just on paper.

Now we have changed the task from only read the book and write about it to experience it and also transformed it to a complete new task.

Cross curriculum

Next thing that traditional teacher's hates: when you adopt tech in your teaching, you're also going cross curriculum. The book example above is not only language but STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

So, the good thing is, if you're colleagues are open minded, they don't have to use a game in their classes, but use the magic of it. For example, we're now have eSport as a free elective course. The best way to help our students to improve in their hobby is to help them with exercises in the gym (strength and endurance), language teacher have the course as a discussion topic, math teachers can use the topic to probability theory, the four operations, percent and statistics.

Lego

If you need inspiration what to build, use plain LEGO instructions. Together with my daughter we've built Friends Lego inside Minecraft where she had to reflect over scale, math, problemsolving and be creative.

Previous examples and experiences:

• Technical drawing, math and scale
• Math & Physics, velocity mostly
• Math, inspiration
• Math, geometry test including the test (linked)

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.

The reading homework

AquaVera has started first grade and they have homework every single day. In addition to mathematics and spelling, they must also practice reading for at least 15 minutes.

But as the language they learn is Finnish (which I struggle with) my wife (AquaVera's mother) does that part. Yesterday I started to thought how I could help, relieve my wife and give my daughter another way to practice.

Minecraft.

How can we benefit from our gaming interest?

First I tried this and failed:

• Lots of text in one sign was too hard.
• One word at one sign didn't make sense, she didn't put together the words into sentences.

Instead, I started to make those animal pens. The keyword with both uppercase and lowercase letters and in her (second) mother tongue Finnish.

So what happened?

She began to spell out the word, pronounced each letter and put together words. The reward attracted, it was something as simple as put out the right block in the animal pen.

Suddenly she had cracked the code:

"L-A-M-M-A-S! Lammas! Det är ett får! It's a sheep dad!"

With traditional methods she was learning one (1) language, with game based learning she connected three (3) languages! The Power of Minecraft...

Minecraft Math

My very awesome colleague Edward starts to be a really splendid MinecraftEDU teacher! He really thinks out of the box and for example one of the first thing the students should build was a hexagon. 

And I thought for myself: 

How on earth will they succeed with that and at the same time learn Pythagorean theorem?

I had not had to worry about.

They wasn't supposed to build the line but finding the correct coordinates. When find the right spot put a sign with the groups name on it. At each hexagon corner each group started to build their own math area.

As you rarely starts at the coordinate (0,0) the first thing you had to do was to find origin. The class did chose themselves to each side (of the hexagon) would have the distance 100 and therefor the height should be approx 87 blocks.

Away you (they) go to find the location...

Out of the box thinking

Coordinates, not lines of blocks! 

Why havn't I thought of that??

One other thing that's truly amazing and also serves as a good example of minecraft tend to be cross curriculum. 

We're not only learning geometry (what's this course is usually is about) but also the coordinate system (the next math course), programming (python) and a foreign language (English (vocabulary))

He made the class to navigate where to execute python online! Copy-paste this code:

It's a formula for the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with cathetus x and y, the distance between the two points (x_1,y_1) and (x_2,y_2).

Also, he and the class, also found this awesome tool Mineconics where you can draw geometry figures with an online tool and later build the same inside Minecraft, like lines, rectangles and circles.

Math with MinecraftEDU

Yesterday a 18 yo student came to me and asked "are we going to play Minecraft the whole course? You see, I've grown tired of play Minecraft (and now play CSGO)" and of course this student had arrived an hour late so he had missed my lecture. 

My first reaction:

Play Minecraft?! Am I really that unclear or don't you listen at all? The Minecraft part of this course is to have a real code project to analyze, problemsolve, plan, make pseudocode, flowcharts, document, test (inside Minecraft and ComputerCraft), evaluate and report. If you're only playing Minecraft you're doing wrong! And the first step to do right is to start listen.

Second reaction:

Unfortunately it came one hour later, but really? Do you have the guts to go to your other teachers and say the same thing? Hey you teacher, I'm kind of tired of using paper and pencils, I don't want to do it anymore!!! Good luck with that...

Solution:

If you had followed my lecture you would have known there's two ways of practice this task, to learn make documentations. Either Minecraft or Codecademy - your choise! 

Everyone else who had choosen Codecademy learn php (as it says in the task) but this student learn html/css instead. Nope, 18yo and can't read nor listen. But still, he's doing something.

Minecraft in general

To use Minecraft in the classroom really is a challenge and because of two things 

• Youth of today move between games really fast and this autumn CSGO (from 2012) is a much more popular game.
• Teachers have just taken the giant step, from paper and pencil to a game learning enviroment.

Therefor, as the enlighten teacher, you have to make the students understand to accept a boring (?) game and to encourage the teacher to continue try new pedagogy ways.

Math with MinecraftEDU

We, the upper secondary vocational institution where I work, has this fall started to participate in a university study, we have the control groups and Åbo Akademi University (Special Education/Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies) collect the data and will present it in a master's thesis. Because there are no, or very few, studies it will be exciting to see what this leads to.

The purpose of the study is to examine how a game (Minecraft) in education affect students' math skills, interests and anxiety.

As I'm the one teacher with experience of the Minecraft environment I also participate in the classroom. It's a bit of a challenge and slightly exhausting, at the same time as I coach the teacher in the game environment I'm also an extra teacher, for the students, in the classroom.

What is Minecraft?

In the ongoing MOOC, Minecraft for educators, we've been asked to identify the different platforms that you can play Minecraft on (Console, Tablet, PC etc) and produce a comparison describing the differences and limitations of each. This first task to show our understanding and knowledge of the different platforms that Minecraft comes on and clearly show what each version is capable of or its limitations. Therefor, here we go.

Minecraft PE

The first version of Minecraft I bought and played, where I saw the light and also understood this ain't enough! We need multiplayer, we need collaboration and we need an easier way to control our character.

But there's some cool features as when it comes to crafting, it's enough to have one piece of wood in your inventory to see what you can craft from that. There's also a separate workbench for stones.

Above: another workbench (sort of) for the stones (to the left). 

Below: Just a quick look to show how Minecraft look inside PE and where you find the controls.

Pos

• Built in craft recieps
• Cheap

Con

• Can't change character skin
• Can't connect to a server
• Difficult to move around
• No redstones
• Limited worlds

Minecraft PC / MAC

Even though I'm an old WASD-gamer I had some issues moving around and do/undo blocks the first sessions. Luckily I both had students and a 5 yo daughter who started to help and teach me. With the PC version my educator eyes opened and I saw the possibilities how to use Minecraft in education.

Comparing with the other plattforms PC has the easiest controls, the worlds are almost unlimited and it's easy to get an exactly position (XYZ). Redstones gives a new dimension what to use Minecraft to.

It's also a flexible plattform as you can mod it free of choice.

Above: how the PC version will look like with the amazing texturepack Dragondance. 

Pos

• Controls
• Redstone
• Unlimited worlds (almost)
• Mod-able
• Console commands
• Skins

Cons

• Controls

MinecraftEDU

MinecraftEDU brings features that really help you in the classroom, as you easily can manage your class, mute or freeze them, teleport, give items and more. These things has turned out to be much valuable when you use Minecraft with older kids as they seek up the mobs instead of avoid them. It's very hard to keep them on track and you have to put up lots of quests to have their focus.

Above: so the MinecraftEDU adds a teacher panel down to the left, otherwise it looks the same as ordinary Minecraft.

Pos

• ComputerCraftEDU, drag and drop code
• Teacher admin panel
• Cheaper than usual Minecraft

Cons

• Controls? ;)

Minecraft Xbox, PS and more

I have no experience of the xbox version (or the other ones). I find myself have some difficulties with the control pads when I play other games, there's too many bottoms and also very hard to focus where to aim.

What comes to pos / cons, this is what I figured out after reading this comparison made by Sgt Merrell.

Above: so here's the Minecraft Xbox view and down to the left there's some kind of "meny", buttons you need in game. The inventory bar is also a bit higher up than in the other versions.

Pos

• Redstones
• Mods
• Easy to host games online
• Easy to host games local

Cons

• Controls
• Limited worlds
• Limited chance to change skins

Minecraft Pi edition

Last one out is the Pi Edition which I heard about when I bought the book "Adventures in Minecraft" and what I understand Pi is based on the Alpha pocket edition but sort of designed to more easy add programming in Python to the game. Minecraft Pi feels like the nerd version of the game as it requires Rasberry pi :D

Above: how the game looks like in Rasperry Pi and if you want to compare ;)

However, don't forget

No matter what platform, be aware of your student will find other things to do no matter what you have planned. Allow some creativity, they will anyway learn the key competences of lifelong learning, a goal which is difficult to reach usually. MinecraftEDU is to prefer as you can freeze your students and also easily control the class and classroom, as shown in the picture below.

Graphics?

Look as that's the biggest issue many has of the game. Use a texturepack and you will get the look you want ;)

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.

Conversations with the youth

The other week I was back home in Sweden, met my family and of course talked with my nephews about school. Well, not exactly what happens in school, but how they perceive school. 

Have the Swedish school managed to use the new technology in a, for the young, attractive manner?

That was an interesting talk, I must say. It was the counterpart to their schools tech ambition with advanced technology that usually only can be found at a University.

By the way, both two nephews had an ongoing punishment of the modern parents attitude to games: computer games banned!!! 

Hey parent! I got news!

They are playing anyways, they've smarphones as they play on instead. Same games by the way... ROFL

If they anyway play videogames, why don't use that interest to something useful? Education for example...

Okay, I was curious, so I kept asking until the nephews whispered: "don't tell mum, I play a lot, even during class when it's too boring..."

Interesting.

They behave in the same way as my students...

Coincidence?

I think not.

So why not using that interest and use it in education?

And you don't have to use as much video games as I do in education, you don't have to start with gamification, but what you could test is to go out of your comfort zone and test something new.

For example, use a plattform as Didactor and see what happens.

I felt so sorry for my niece (16 yo) that I made a special course, for a test, using the tool Didactor and three funny things occured.

1. She loved this way of learning (games) and said she was only sitting for "like 5 min" (actually 45 min).
2. Her classmates got deadly jealous
3. Her mother, the teacher and member of tech working group, thought it was interesting but a bit too advanced. To log in.

And by the way, a colleague of mine has started using Didactor today in the practical nurse education, and as a result using games in education she has halved todays lessons... and they already on their way to do the first test, three lessons before the scheduled time. She was surprised, excited and overwhelmed! My colleague reported two things

1. The students loved it!
2. Learning is fun!

The other one, my nephew 13 yo, told me his school has such an advanced robot the other one is at a University. They trying to make code to it. It feels a bit to start in the wrong end... 

Really? 

13 yo and start with a University technology? 

When he loves Minecraft? 

Sounds like computer craft would be a better choice for the target audience...

Yeah and how could I forgot?

What do I know? "You're not even qualified teacher!!!"

No. Not yet. I'm working on that part...

And in addition, that was a pretty lame excuse for not listening to the young people...

About Didactor
Yes, I know there's a couple of other platforms which do exactly the same things but as I tend to go for the KISS-way I rather pay to get a working solution with a clean nice interface and a low learning curve. Look at paragraph 3 above, starts with "her mother, the teacher..."

Keep It Simple Stupid.

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.