Day 1: Some awesome things are happening in the NT. Working up here with other educators on day one was just amazing. I don't even have words to explain what is going through my head right now. What an experience, working with people who 'get it' is just amazing. Showing them what is possible with a bit of time and effort gives those moments you get into teaching for, those 'lightbulb'/wow moments when you can see the wonder in their face.
My first seminar was another experience I am still trying to digest. Working with a reasonably large group of people on game based learning and how it links to curriculum standards is something I will never forget. Seeing that 'oh yeah that could work' look on their faces and having those discussions to try and get teachers to think out of the box and attempt something new in their classes.
In a quick summary of today, WOW!!!! I had an absolute ball, I am so glad I have had the opportunity, and I have 2 days left, I cannot wait for tomorrow, I am buzzed and want to keep working.
Day 2: Went pretty much the same as day one, quick! I worked with Tim all day today working towards building a map for another teacher to use in their class. It is basically a skyblock survival map, but copied 25 times, 1 for each student. This is just a way to get them problem solving and researching.
Teaching Tim how to use the advanced build tools in MinecraftEdu as well as Worldedit has been a blast, every now and then throwing him a new tool to play with and seeing him run away and have a practice and mess it up, undo it and try again has just been awesome.
Day 3: I am quite sad that this experience has to end, today I was working with 2 teachers who had almost no experience in Minecraft and 1 teacher who has had a fair bit of time in the environment. The real interesting thing is that when the 2 teachers that had little experience turned up and were asked if they had seen or heard of MinecraftEdu, one of them replied with "Yeah I googled it the other day, cos I thought I better find out what this PD I am going to is all about and I saw a video on YouTube of some guy and his class." I had to say "ummmm yeah, that was probably me", as soon as I spoke he said, "yeah you are right". I find it a very strange experience to talk to people who "know" me from my online stuff.
The other interesting thing that happened is that Tim took his skyblock map home and played it with his son last night to test it out a bit, his son is 7 years old. Apparently they were up until 10pm playing and Tim was being taught things by his son. He freaked when his son started to chop down the tree but he explained that he needed a pick to get the cobble from the cobble stone generator he had created. Amazing that a 7 year old is learning skills that will help him later in life, all because of Minecraft.
So a wrap up of the last 3 days. What an experience I have had. Never have I had this much fun working. I still want to teach my classes, but I really want to train other teachers how they too can bring MinecraftEdu into their classes. Hopefully I can keep doing both.
As always thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.
Hi, I'm another aussie teacher starting on th eminecraft journey and I came across your blog and some of your videos on Youtube. You are doing some great stuff!
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of noob questions for you, any help would be greatly appreciated.
1. How do you add a new map to the minecraftedu mod server?
2. I just got tutorial world when I downloaded minecraftedu - where are the other default worlds?
3. Did you buy online licences for students or just the edu mod for a local server at school?
Chris - Cape Clear
Hi Chris, welcome aboard a great journey. The first question I will answer is your licensing one. You must have enough Minecraft licenses for your students, otherwise you are breaking copyright. Depending on how many 'servers' you are running you should only need one MinecraftEdu license. That will allow you to run 1 MinecraftEdu server for up to 100 students.
DeleteIn the latest release there are no other default worlds, you will have to create a new one.
Adding maps is very easy if you find a map you like you can put it in the 'savedMaps' folder of your servertool and load it up very easy. Depending on your OS the path is a bit different, but if you can find your MinecraftEdu directory on your server it is under
MinecraftEdu\Servertool\MinecraftEduWorlds\savedMaps
Hope that helps, you can also ask questions on the forums and get help from many more people. Not that I mind, but if I am busy you might be waiting a while. The link to the forums is
http://minecraftedu.com/forums/
Let me know here, or on the forums of any more questions and I will do my best to help.
Thanks for your help Elfie.
DeleteI have 16 kids and I have ordered 16 licenses - maybe I need to change that to 1 license.
Thanks for your help with the server stuff - it worked.
Cheers!
No worries, I will just clarify that you need 2 different licenses. 1 normal Minecraft license for each student, these can be bought from MinecraftEdu with an educational discount, you will also need 1 MinecraftEdu license to run a MinecraftEdu server.
DeleteSo my school is set up with a set of 25 Minecraft licenses for the computer lab, and 1 MinecraftEdu license for my server.
Hi Elfie,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your support and guidance. I am super excited about getting MinecraftEdu into schools. I have already been booked to go into the 2 schools you worked with to work with each class.
Here is a blog post of my own about your training. It is in my yet to be finished site TrainingPD.com
Chat to you soon