For this last week I wanted to share where learning about Minecraft has taken us next. I was quick to use Youtube to find out more information one because I know there are millions of videos on nearly every subject but also because I am a visual and kinesthetic learner. I have to first see it and then try it out myself in order to fully process the learning. So the more Youtube videos I watch the more my children wanted to explore as well. This was again a little scary for me because once you open that Youtube or Pandora’s Box it is hard to scale back. Each time we would sit down to play my girls would want to go watch Stampylonghead Minecraft videos. I couldn’t understand why you want to sit and watch videos of other people playing. I kind of checked out mentally or thought about the other 1,000 things I needed to get accomplished. I would ask them, “but don’t you want to play the game not watch the game?” A’s response was a lightbulb for me-- she said, “but mom I like to watch the videos because he builds such cool things. I can copy him and build the things he builds and build a farmland.” Which is exactly what I read when I came across an article called, “Minecraft gamer's YouTube hit 'more popular than Bieber.” In describing the channel the article says, “Welcome to the new world of children's entertainment, where devoted gamers watch videos of other people playing so they can perfect their skills and become better players.” I thought this quote was also very powerful, “"I think it makes it feel more personal than watching a TV and they feel like they know me more. I'll get messages from people, not about my videos, just telling me what they did that day.” StampyCat or (his nickname) posts a new Minecraft video every day for his 6 million viewers. On top of his regular channel he has created another channel called “WonderQuest” in which Stampy and his friends try to save a town from evil-- all through the use of Minecraft. I think it is fascinating how a computer game was able to turn itself into a full fledge community of learning on-line. What I appreciate eve more is the conversations that I can have with others, whether it be educators, parents or my friends that stem from questioning what Minecraft is. When I first started questioning what Minecraft was I didn't really know what questions to even ask. Let’s take a look at my original inquiry questions: 1. What is Minecraft? 2. Will I learn to code by playing Minecraft? Is it coding? 3. What do the books have to do with Minecraft that I see in the stores? Do I need the books? 4. Will our relationship feel more connected since we will be playing this together? 5. Will my other daughter feel left out? Will she want to join in as well? 6. Do you win? Lose? Die? 7. What are the positives of Minecraft? 8. What are the negatives? 9. Will I want to continue to play after the project is over? 10. How much does Minecraft cost to keep up? Is it a one time fee or do you need to purchase more things as time goes by? I am going to answer these questions in my final 20time post but just looking at them I can see how my learning path took me to more than I could have imagined in the beginning. Resources: Minecraft gamer's YouTube hit 'more popular than Bieber' - BBC News. (n.d.). Retrieved July 24, 2015. This week I went into thinking my time was going to be spent going in one direction but it ended in a different direction. After finding Minecraftwiki last week listing out the play-by-play; literally the minute to minute of survival strategies I thought I would use that to help me get further along in the game. However, after spending several sessions attempting to play like that it just felt too forced. I was not having fun anymore and all of the momentum of the previous weeks seemed to dissipate. My daughters on the other hand were asking to spend more and more time playing Minecraft. They ventured into survival mode a few times but mostly they staying in creative mode. They love it so much I ended up purchasing the “pocket edition” for the ipad so that both could be playing at the same time. I’ve always been one to try and control their screen time and would much rather have them playing outside in the dirt making imaginary mud pies and selling lemonade then sitting in front of a screen. So I still am very cognizant of making sure they play both indoors and outdoors. Our conversations about Minecraft happen nearly daily. What I love is that a third person to the conversation would not know that we were necessarily talking about a computer game when we we are talking. J- my daughter that was not at all interested in Minecraft before I started wanted to build a fun land. She was asking me about restaurants and drive thru windows. She created a drive through McDonalds right next to the Funland sign because "I never let her go to McDonalds. Then we talked about railroads, and people being able to eat on the roof of their house. How do people get on their roof? Is there a hole in the roof? A door? What about lighting? Is the moon bright enough to lite up the night sky for people to be able to enjoy their dinner on the roof? If not, then she needed to put flames up there. She was figuring out her virtual world but at the same time learning all about her real world. All while she was discussing this we would be sitting together building her funland together. I wasn’t necessarily the one making the decisions but the learning that I came away from the discussions with her were very powerful. I didn’t quite get how Minecraft could be used in education until I sat down and had those conversations with her. After the lightbulb went off I wanted to research more in depth how educators really were using Minecraft. One of the first articles I came across made me think, “why didn’t I think of that?” It was a blog entry called “Journey Writing with Minecraft” by David Lee. He states, “Teachers have to find out their students’ interests and utilize the information to facilitate learning for higher achievement.” Another resource that I came across this week was a podcast on Minecraft being used in the classroom by MinecraftEdu creator Joel Levin. A powerful statement I heard was that “You have to flip your expectations on the head and get out of your comfort zone. [You] have to be okay with not being the expert in the room.” Another great point was that students are passionate about Minecraft and will respond to it. Minecraft creates produces and not just consumers of technology. I know this is something as educators were are all wanting our students to reach. I think it is an exciting time for gaming and education. With the right parameters, student engagement and learning can be raised to a much higher level than seen before! This week I had several huge “aha!” moments. I don’t want to single one out as the biggest but the one that spoke to me the most was this video posted on youtube about the purpose of Minecraft. When I first started playing I was expecting something similar to Super Mario Bros, in that you have a character that follows a linear level. There are points to gain, obstacles to overcome and a somewhat easy to see end task to reach in order to reach the next level. With Minecraft I walked around the world I created literally wandering around. I heard sounds, it got dark but I didn’t really get it. During one of my first experiences I accidently “mined” my way into a hole that I didn’t know how to get out of. I was losing interest quickly! I especially couldn’t understand its point after seeing how Minecraft has exploded to an insane level of popularity that it is now. Surely I was missing something! I was. The author in the above linked video shared that Minecraft is what you make it. There really is no one set specific goal but instead it is driven behind the purpose you give it. My first reaction is no...really….what's the point, there has to be more to it than that? That is when he went on to explain two of the three major modes that you can choose when you first create your world: survival or creative. He didn’t explain “hardcore” but its name alone lets me know I am not quite ready for that yet. In Creative, you are free to create what you want. You have an endless supply of tools, and you don’t need to worry about surviving. I read somewhere that this is like a digital Legos- all the benefits of Lego building without having to worry about stepping on the pieces! This is where we have been playing the most. I appreciate it that it allows you to build and create without the threat of dying. My first sunset! After spending a couple of days building in creative I thought it was time to jump over to survival mode. I had more of an understanding of what was needed to do and wanted to mix it up a bit. I started my first day with barely gathering flowers and nearly being killed by a rabbit. Things were not looking so good. I appreciated the view for a bit but knew I had to pick it up if was going to survive. Curious about what others suggested to do on the first day, I googled- “first day suggestions in Minecraft” and came up with this…. Are you kidding me? Wow-things just got real. A play by play of what you should do minute by minute! I was wondering how to make a bed and there it tells me! I need to kill sheep in order to make wool that then turns into bed. Since I didn’t get too far into my new survival world I decided to start a new world, with the tutorial goals in mind. From my post from last week I shared that I would be revealing an issue that came up. Before I started the project one of my inquiry questions was- "5. Will my other daughter feel left out? Will she want to join in as well? It only took a matter of 30 minutes before she wanted to join as well. Learning is contagious when others around you are discussing a similar topic! Here is a short video of her jumping right in! I think as adults we need to remember how quickly children are willing to take risks even when they don’t quite know what they are doing. J's mermaid. She said "she is just a statue sitting on a rock." I can say now I get it! I get what the attraction of Minecraft is! The music is so soothing and relaxing, and allows you to "check out" for a bit. I am excited to continue in my survival world and learn more about--surviving! My learning for this week has also pushed me into looking at how Minecraft is being used in education. It was not one of my original questions but now that I understand how Minecraft is played I am curious to see how teachers are using the program. This next week I will be exploring that more!
My goal this week was to just play the game and create a list of questions once I started. I downloaded the game, clicked a couple of buttons to start, but within minutes my daughter (who we will call A) heard the music and yelled “Its Minecraft!!!” I thought, “wow….great job Minecraft in marketing your brand!” I started moving my player through the jungle (is it a jungle?) and wasn’t quite sure what the point was. A was trying to show me how to move my player and quickly got frustrated that I was not moving him fast enough. So, she began playing. Within a couple of minutes we heard a lamb noise but couldn’t quite find where the lamb was at. I remembered from my previous research that the bad guys come out at night but I wasn’t quite sure when night time began. How long did we have before night time came along? "A" began “mining” a bunch of blocks, trees, etc. but within a couple of minutes it started to get dark- really dark. I was a little bit worried that all of a sudden horrible monsters were going to come out of nowhere and kill our character. I told A- “remember we learning how to play and if you die within a couple of minutes it's okay- it will only help us learn what not to do next time.” Right before it hard turned dark we were trying to place some of the blocks and make a house. I still couldn’t help but think, “this program has turned into a billion dollar program that is played worldwide?? How???” We still didn’t know how to place the block, where or what is was that we were trying to accomplish with the blocks so I googled “how to place a block in minecraft.” Thankfully we found a video that helped.... Only 25 seconds long and exactly what we needed. A couple of more questions that we had while playing--- Do we want to kill the animals? Do they count as “food” for us? How long until it turns night time? How long does nighttime last? Does our character need to survive like a human? Sleep at night? Eat? We both were asking each other questions and thinking out loud during the process. I would have to say that A knew a lot more about Minecraft going into the first game then I had originally thought. She immediately knew how to maneuver the player to go up/down whereas I was still trying to figure out what in the heck was on the screen. However stay tuned for the next post to find our next obstacle! Minecraft: It’s everywhere and I have been living under a rock the past 6 years are my two big take-aways from my first week of this project. My first action step in starting this project was to go back to the beginning and research what Minecraft actually was. One simple search in google of “Minecraft” resulted with 131,000,000 --within one second. Once I started clicking on links I knew I needed a way to organize the articles and history of Minecraft. Enter diigo. “Diigo is a social bookmarking website which allows signed-up users to bookmark and tag web-pages. Additionally, it allows users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes to specific highlights or to a whole page.” (Wikipedia) I also started a pinterest page as I love that research is “pinned” by images and can be categorized by editable boards. However, this is where it got a little crazy! I was shocked at the amount of Minecraft pins that were for birthday parties, bedding, arts and crafts, basically everything but the game. There are definitely pins for that too but I learned that Minecraft is so much more than just the game. After spending a few hours reading, pinning and going down a few rabbit holes I refocused and went back to the actual Minecraft website where I learned what Minecraft was. According to the website, “Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things. It can also be about adventuring with friends or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It’s pretty. Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary than pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.” I have to say the “adventuring with friends or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean” caught my attention and made me run for my credit card to start playing! In order to play you need to pay 26.95 to download the game. Stay tuned for next week as I start to build and create! After giving it further thought, reading the comments from peers and discussing the options with my husband I have chosen to learn how to play Minecraft as my 20% project. Reasons are that ultimately I probably would have ventured toward learning this program this summer, assignment or not. Also, while I know the garden/flower idea would have brought a positive change to our home learning Minecraft will hopefully help many more than just my family. There is a group at school that may be learning Minecraft and I want to be able to participate in the conversation as well! Finally, for financial reasons I believe the garden project may take up a lot more funds that I am hoping to spend this summer compared to that of Minecraft.
I am looking forward to the learning process, not only for myself but reflecting on it as my daughter learns it with me. Join us as we learn! My second idea for this project involves my daughter as well. She has been asking, pleading and begging to learn Minecraft. I have no idea what Minecraft is but I know it is everywhere. I have wanted to learn it about it so I thought the best way would learn to play the game, not just learn what it is about. I thought it would be interesting to learn it together with my daughter as well. Here are the questions that I hope to answer by learning about Minecraft.
1. What is Minecraft? 2. Will I learn to code by playing Minecraft? Is it coding? 3. What do the books have to do with Minecraft that I see in the stores? Do I need the books? 4. Will our relationship feel more connected since we will be playing this together? 5. Will my other daughter feel left out? Will she want to join in as well? 6. Do you win? Lose? Die? 7. What are the positives of Minecraft? 8. What are the negatives? 9. Will I want to continue to play after the project is over? 10. How much does Minecraft cost to keep up? Is it a one time fee or do you need to purchase more things as time goes by? My first idea comes from a deep love of flowers and gardens. Yet, I kill nearly every flower I try to grow and have yet to start a garden. My family lives on a large enough property (not too big but not small either) that we have plenty of space to make our lives a little sustainable on the land. We've talked about adding hens, growing a garden and nearly every day I drive past a house that has beautiful hydrangeas out front, all while thinking "one day." We have lived in our home for four years but our yard looks like no one has lived here in 10. I am not proud of our outdoor space at all. I have to add that all of the efforts have been put on the changing the inside (and a few of the outside structural issues). Nearly every room has been completely remolded by my husband alone so I am grateful for his dedication and skills in changing our home. However, I am ready to make our landscaping more attractive now as well. My goal would be to add flowers along the front and side and add a garden box in the back. Here are a few questions that I have as I think about this project, and hopefully would find answers to as I complete the project:
1. What location is best for Hydrangeas to grow? 2. Do we have good soil? (What is good soil?) 3. How often do I need to water the flowers before I accidentally kill them? 4. In previous attempts I think I over watered the flowers. How do you really learn how much water is enough? 5. What vegetables should I start out growing? 6. Which ones are easier to grow, more difficult, etc? 7. Are there seasonal vegetables? Even in So. Cal? 8. Will we eat more vegetables if we are a part of the growing process? 9. What is the best location for growing veggies? In a planter box, or is the backyard just as good? 10. If I do use a planter box why? How? What supplies are needed for that? |
KellyI like people. I love their stories even more. Archives
August 2015
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