Category Archives: Education

Minecraft and Media Literacy

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MInecraft and Media Literacy Header

By Beth S. O’Connell and Marianne Malmstrom

I’ve been working on getting Minecraft into our school for about a year now, ever since I discovered for myself how (surprisingly) immersive and thought-provoking it can be. When our school system got a grant for a school calendar study which resulted in a twice-yearly Intersession week between quarters, the opportunity arose. I used Knowclue Kidd’s (Marianne Malmstrom) idea for real estate ads in Minecraft to teach some media literacy concepts. The kids had a blast playing, and even learned a little about how advertising techniques are used.

Once the new calendar was approved, the teachers and staff members were given one hour to come up with a plan for their intersession class. Each of us would be teaching a half-day class for five days. We had to provide fun activities that linked to our state standards. In just that short period of time, we came up with some amazing ideas! This was my submission:

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Intersession Title: Minecraft and Media Literacy

Grade Level: 7

Content(s) and Standard(s):

7.3 The student will understand the elements of media literacy. a) Identify persuasive/informative techniques used in nonprint media including television, radio, video, and Internet. b) Distinguish between fact and opinion, and between evidence and inference. c) Describe how word choice and visual images convey a viewpoint. d) Compare and contrast the techniques in auditory, visual, and written media messages. e) Craft and publish audience-specific media messages

Brief Description:

After learning about persuasive techniques in the media, students will build a house in Minecraft and create a video advertisement with machinima.

Are you tired of being manipulated by advertisers? Learn their tactics! Students will build a house in Minecraft and market it with a machinima real estate ad.

Detailed List of Materials Needed:

  • MinecraftEdu server and 25-30 licences (https://minecraftedu.com/purchase)

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Getting MinecraftEdu installed and working felt like swimming upstream against a strong current. Our IT department was very willing and supportive, but had a lot of competing demands on their time. Eventually we hope to have MinecraftEdu hosted on a district server, but for this project I ran the server on my school-issued laptop. We used a 30-workstation computer lab, which I spent several hours configuring so the server IP address was already added when the students started the software. (The IT department set a fixed IP address for my laptop.)

We’re using the Canvas LMS (learning management system) this year in our district, so I spent some time creating a course with assignments and resources for this class. My class was scheduled for the last half of the school day, so I spent each morning getting ready for the class. For the first session, the students wrote a bulletin board post introducing themselves, and took a Minecraft Experience survey (created with Google Forms). At the beginning of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th days, they wrote a guided reflection piece, and they took another survey at the end of the class. Nothing was graded, but most of the students did a good job completing the assignments (despite some grumbling about having to wait to play.)

MInecraft and Media Literacy Canvas

We jumped right in at the beginning of the first day doing the MinecraftEdu Orientation. This build offers a lot for all levels, getting the completely inexperienced users started, and providing puzzles for the experienced players to figure out. The students were required to use their own real names, with no gamertags or numbers.

MinecraftEdu Orientation

After we played for an hour or so, I stopped them and had them log in to Canvas to do the survey and introduction. I started talking about media literacy by saying: “You’re being tricked! Every day, advertisers try to trick you into spending your money, or getting your parents to spend theirs. Have you noticed how this can happen? How do you feel about this?” The students seemed really unaware of this, in spite of the vast amount of media exposure that most kids have.

The next day I played some real estate ads that I found on YouTube (available on this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSn_3qRXdgj1DKid15BFNrHVqfSsFxaWp), asking them to look at some elements of video media  (lighting, editing, sound, language used, what is featured, camera shots). We talked about features of houses, and generated lists of essential, advantageous, and luxury features that they might want to include. I played Knowclue’s machinima of her students’ Minecraft real estate ads to show what we were aiming for. Here’s what Knowclue said via email about her class’s process:

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> I gave my 5th graders 3 class periods to build any single dwelling house they wanted on a single account. Since we are a 1:1 school I allowed kids to use mods as well if they had them on their personal computer. Didn’t feel that piece mattered for this project.
> We spent one class period looking at array of real estate commercials from our town that I had preselected. The commercials represented a range of house types from apartments to higher end homes. Before we watched the commercials we did a quick brainstorm to populate 3 categories:
> What is essential? (bathroom, kitchen, etc)
> What is an advantage? (garage, en suite bathrooms, etc)
> What would be a luxury? (theater, tennis courts, etc)
> Kids generate the list pretty quickly and we use it for a reference when we watch the videos.
> I asked the kids to watch each commercial carefully to identify the language used, the camera shots and what is featured.
> It’s a blast to dissect each commercial – kids pick this up really quickly, without much prompting. They LOVE identifying on the conventions to “sell” – I gave them very little instruction, mostly just prepared to ask questions. Sometimes I would ask them to identify what kinds of word/phrases they used and after kids generated the list, we would rematch the commercial. It’s a really fun class and you can get through quite a few examples after you generate the list of needs to luxury.
> I give them one class to construct the commercials for their house. I let them choose to use video or pictures, most choose pictures as that is pretty much represents the commercials they saw.
> 5 classes – pretty straight forward. Just so you know the 6th grade ran a simultaneous challenge on OpenSim. I met with 6th grade twice a week and gave them 6 periods to build since the learning curve was steeper.

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I had set up a random world in Creative mode for them to use. They were to explore, find somewhere to build, and give me the coordinates. Some students finished their houses that day, while others were still exploring at the end of class. Several students asked if they could work with a partner, and I encouraged this. I was pleased to see some new alliances developing by the end of the week, between students who didn’t know each other previously.

Minecraft Collaboration

The students did reflections at the beginning of each class after that. The next day I showed them how to take screenshots in Minecraft, how to find their screenshots and transfer them to their storage drives, and how to make a machinima with their screenshots in Moviemaker. They followed the directions with varying degrees of completion. I was learning along with them, staying one step ahead.

We did have some trouble with griefing. A few players flew around to other people’s houses throwing eggs, which then hatched into a plague of chickens. A few people’s houses were partially destroyed, and the perpetrators would not come forward. However, the worst destruction was my fault–on the last day I accidentally saved the world as the previous day’s work, losing all of the building they had done that day. ARRGGHH!! The class as a whole was very willing to help each other out. The responses I got from the end-of-course survey showed that the students really enjoyed the class and thought it went well.

I’m not sure how much the students really learned about media literacy. At least now they’re aware that it’s a thing, and that advertisers use techniques to get them and their parents to spend money. We’re having another Intersession in the spring, and I’m thinking of focusing on civics and developing a community. We had trouble with Moviemaker: although the students saved their files, I couldn’t open them up to show them to the class, so we couldn’t do the sharing at the end. Instead, I opened the world in Survival mode (no PvP) so they could play. That was really satisfying, and the inexperienced players had a chance to try it out.

I learned a lot from teaching this course, and getting to know the students better. I would say that they all were successful–they have a new awareness of media, they developed problem-solving abilities, relationships and coping strategies, and they had a great time playing together. The end-of-course survey showed an overwhelmingly positive response. I’m looking forward to working with our students in Minecraft again.

 

From Solo Librarian to Virtual World Librarian

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For the past five years I have been a solo librarian, working without a library assistant. It’s been like going back in time to the 1960s, when most school librarians just checked books in and out. This year our district reinstated that position, so I can take our library back to the 21st Century! Our library already looks fantastic–it’s straightened up most of the time, the books are all shelved, and I can help the students out while they’re looking for books.

In my quest to maintain professional connections during the past five years, I began using the virtual world of Second Life to network with other educators and librarians. This has evolved to the point that I’m heavily involved in publicizing education events in the virtual worlds of Second Life, Open Simulator, and Minecraft. I’m Beth Ghostraven in all of those worlds.

I’m still a school librarian in the physical world (RL, aka Real Life), and that job is very important to me, but I’m going to start using this blog to explore my experiences using virtual worlds in education. As a solo librarian, my posts were few and far between because my time was stretched so thin. I’m hoping to keep this updated more often.

Library Stories

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I’m going through the patron records for our 8th graders who are leaving for high school, and remembered…

The young man who came in every day for manga in 6th grade, until he lost a book and couldn’t check out any more until he paid for it, which he didn’t. This seemed to be part of the worsening of his attitude about school. This year I instituted a new policy: students still had to pay for lost or damaged books, but if they paid me at least $1.00 each time they wanted to check out, I’d let them check out one book each time. This young man started doing that, and after finally paying the book off, came in every day to get more manga. When he brought back his last books this year, he said that he wanted to make sure he returned them so other students could check them out. Eureka! He gets the whole idea of a lending library now! When I told our reading specialist this story, she said that was the first positive thing she’d ever heard about this student.

Almost every name brings a face to mind. I love being able to greet students by name when they come in, and some of them get a big kick out of it. Others are suspicious–“Why do you know my name?!?” I tell them it’s because I’m working on it.

Hello, Summer! Goodbye, Old School Year!

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Taking a page from Scott Merrick’s book (http://scottmerrick.blogspot.com/), this will be a reflection on the past year–out of necessity in my case, since I didn’t post anything all year. Here are some highlights:

ALICE Training – This is where I got stuck on this blog process, before school even started. I was so unnerved after we did this simulated active-shooter training that I didn’t know what to say. We had live gunfire (with blanks, of course) and announcements about where the “shooter” had been, and we were to make our own decisions about whether to evacuate, barricade, or fight back. We got hands-on training in the latter two. The training, organized by our local police department, was very effective. As a friend pointed out, our first priority should be to get the  hell out with our students.

Snow Days – We had an amazingly winterish winter! Snow days started in December, including one where it was just too cold for kids to stand at the bus stops. Between snow and the book fair, the library was only open for checkout for 7 days in December.

Library Guild – Once again, I had grand plans that didn’t come to fruition. We didn’t get started until mid-November, and only 7-10 kids showed up for the meetings. They had a snack for the first 20-30 minutes, then they were supposed to straighten the shelves for 15-20 minutes, then play board games for the rest of the time. Because there were so few students, I didn’t assign shelf sections this year. Most of them spent the work time standing around and talking, in spite of anything I said. I’m not going to do a Library Guild next year, as I can see it’s not working the way I had hoped it would. I don’t think I’ll do a club at all; if anything, it would be a Game Club. If I could get another teacher interested, it would be easier to stay enthusiastic.

Recognition – I realized that I’m not likely to ever be named Educator of the Year at my school because I don’t have a team to vote for me. This is a common problem for instructional support teachers; also, the pod architecture in this building encourages the grade levels to act as closed groups. I need to do a better job of publicizing what I do in the library, not just for me, but so the teachers and upper admin know what good it does to have a librarian in this school. Since our district is using Google, I’m planning to share my library calendar with the staff and put on it what I’m working on.

Virtual Worlds – For the past two years, I’ve used Second Life at school to attend meetings of education groups. I thought my administrators were supportive of this, since we’ve discussed how my virtual world activities contribute to the profession as a whole. Apparently they were unaware, and I was told (on my rezday, ironically) that I can no longer access Second Life at school. I accept this, but it’s naturally very disappointing. I’ve noticed that attendance has been down at the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable now that I’m not doing announcements before the meetings. I think our district, like many, doesn’t realize that use of virtual worlds is included in our state Standards of Learning:

Technology Communication Tools
C/T 9-12.15 Communicate effectively with others (e.g., peers, teachers, experts) in
collaborative learning situations.
A. Use technology tools for individual and collaborative writing,
communication, and publishing activities.
• Use various technology resources to develop, revise, and assess written and media-based reports and projects, integrating technologies as appropriate.
• Independently collaborate with others using digital communication tools.
• Use digital communication tools to communicate with specific audiences.
B. Participate in communications among different cultures.
• Contribute during a distance-based communication project that includes
individuals from different cultures by leveraging the differences of those cultures to develop solutions to common issues.
C. Participate in online courses, social and learning networks, and virtual worlds.
• Manage goals for learning in an online course.
• Participate in activities that involve social and learning networks and virtual worlds.

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/computer_technology/2012/stds_comptech_9-12.pdf (Thank you to Bill Schmachtenberg for pointing this out.)

Stats – Circulation was down 21% this year. That’s appallingly different from what I expected at the beginning, since the library wasn’t closed for instruction at all once orientations were done. When I added things up, though, we were actually open for 18 fewer days than we were last year. Also, when I think about it, I heard teachers and students say many times that they were reading on their eReaders instead (phones, tablets, etc.), since we implemented BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) fully this year. The high school librarian and I have talked about buying more eBooks for our libraries, and I think now is the time.

Collection – The collection is in better shape this year than it ever has been. I’m especially proud of our fiction collection, which is full of popular and worthwhile books, and is expanding beyond its space. I just finished moving, weeding, and dusting that whole section so I could fit all of the books in. I’m just starting to work on my official project for this year, renovating the sports section (796). My SMART goals for this year are based on that, since data shows that it’s the most heavily-used nonfiction part of this library.

Student Request Program – Students can request books for the library, and I try to buy those books whenever possible. This year I kept track of fulfilled requests: 101, not counting the books the students selected from the book fair for the library. The best part of this program is the looks on kids’ faces when the get to check out the book that they requested–that makes all of this worthwhile.

Well, that’s a mish-mosh, but those are some of the things I’ve been thinking about. Feel free to leave comments in response!

Further Adventures in Virtual Worlds

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My professional connections have gotten deeper and more numerous over the past year. I thought about saying “my *virtual* professional connections”, but although the meeting places are virtual, the people and the connections are real. In many cases they extend into other social media, and into physical life (PL, also known as RL for Real Life).

I still attend the same meetings that I did last year, with the addition of ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries), an ALA affiliate. These meetings and groups still do not contribute directly to my job, but I feel certain that my passion for virtual world education will lead somewhere, eventually. At the very least, they boost my morale and satisfaction with my current, somewhat challenging, job.

My roles in these groups have changed over the year. I got frustrated with trying to find information about the various meetings, so I wound up doing publicity inworld, and on social media, for all of these groups. For Virtual Pioneers, I co-host the biweekly Meet & Greets, and help corral people on tours. I’m a VSTE Facilitator, helping to plan events. I’m the Producer for the ISTE SIGVE Speaker Series. I helped start the Cultural Community Hub. I’m Transcript Editor for VWER, and I help with transcripts for NonProfit Commons. I also helped with streaming sessions for the OpenSim Community Conference last fall (http://conference.opensimulator.org/2013/). My husband feels like even when I’m home, I’m never home!

I make friends wherever I go in SL, at least one a day.The result of all of these connections is that when someone is telling me about their project, I can usually think of someone else who might be able to help them, resulting in more connections within the education community.

I’m giving a lecture tomorrow at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference (http://vwbpe.org), about Professional Education Connections in Virtual Worlds. Last year I could barely attend; I’m hoping this goes well.

Goodbye, Summer! Hello, New School Year!

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This morning dawned crisp and clear, a harbinger of fall days to come. I went back to work on Monday, and I have this week, before the teachers come back, to get a head start on the new year.

This summer was full of social media and online professional development. In June, although I couldn’t go to San Antonio, I participated in the ISTE 2013 Conference SIGVE Playground. (ISTE = International Society for Technology in Education; SIGVE = Special Interest Group on Virtual Environments:  http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net/SIGVE+Virtual+Environments+Playground+ISTE+2013.) I helped out inworld for the Second Life portion, as Gord Holden did a presentation for the attendees. Later I was asked to take on Gridjumper’s role as Producer for the SIGVE Speaker Series (http://sigve.weebly.com/13-14-speakers.html). I’m looking forward to working with our speakers and guests, some of whom have no virtual world experience.

In addition to my usual round of meetings, and an Internet-free vacation in the North Woods, I managed to attend the beginning and ending sessions of the VWBPE Conference (VWBPE = Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education: http://www.vwbpe.org/) I’m now taking part in the post-conference MOOC (http://vwbpe.kamedia-interactive.com/), which explores some of the virtual worlds in more detail. Next year’s VWBPE Conference is April 9-12, 2014, and I’m hoping to participate more fully.

Now, for library goals for this year. I hesitate to put these in print, for fear of failing, but I think most of us know that without failing there is no learning. So…

This year I want to focus on staff development, rather than direct student instruction. I can do that without closing the library much, since I can work with grade level planning blocks. I’m hoping to collaborate with our ITRT (Instructional Technology Resource Teacher) on monthly tech training, plus do short bits at staff meetings and grade level meetings. I hope to help teachers (and their students) learn about EasyBib, online research databases, the Destiny library catalog (including interactive functions), and Edmodo (or whatever equivalent thing we’re using).

I’m hoping to continue the after-school Library Guild. This year I’m going to start out assigning shelf sections and incorporating badges. We might be able to use Edmodo for this, too. I still haven’t learned to play Minecraft, but I’m looking into the possibility of using this with the Guild, too.

This might be the year that I establish a Library Council of teachers, parents, students, and administrators. I really need to become part of a group, rather than a department of one. If we can meet quarterly, we could at least make a start. I’d like to use the AASL framework that Chris Flench shared a couple of years ago; hopefully I can find my notes!

We have a change in administration, as our former principal was promoted to a district position. I’m feeling positive about this, as our new principal is our former assistant principal, with whom I’ve worked well for years. Our new AP used to be a teacher here, and we’ve collaborated on teaching together. I’m meeting with the principal on Friday to talk about goals, and learn more about how the library program can support our school and district goals.

Now–on to processing the rest of the new books that came in last year! Huzzah for the new year!

 

Reflections on This School Year

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Last Friday was the last day of school for the students, and yesterday was the last teacher workday. In my district, the librarians are lucky enough to be paid for 10 extra workdays, so we don’t have to volunteer our time to get necessary library tasks done. My last day is Friday–the light at the end of the tunnel!

At the end of last year, I talked with my administrators about focusing on library circulation rather than teaching research units. Last year the library was closed every other week, for most of the year, so I could do research instruction. This year the library has been open for most of the year. I thought circulation would zoom up, but it was a 10% increase, mostly making up the 8% that it went down last year. Average daily circulation actually fell, by 14%. I’ve felt chained to the desk most of the time, because even when classes aren’t here, students trickle in on passes in a steady stream. The pace has been much more reasonable, though.

Because I’m being evaluated this year (and because I am mostly evaluated as a teacher, not a librarian), I did work with one teacher on part of a research unit. Using our recollections of previous units, we decided that I would focus on two parts: Asking Questions, and Notetaking. We scheduled two days, with one in between. The day before the students came in, the teacher had them write questions about their biography subject, to be used as a baseline assessment to show student progress. The next day, I instructed the students on writing good questions, and they repeated the assignment. Our plan was to have them take notes independently the next day, then I would teach about notetaking the following day. It took the students longer to do the initial notetaking than we had planned on, so when they were ready for instruction, I was already having classes in for checkout and couldn’t do much.

I was surprised when I crunched the numbers for the two assignments’ pre- and post-assessments. Overall, 70% of the students showed at least a 10% improvement on the first assignment, and 92% showed at least a 10% improvement on the second assignment. Possible reasons: 1) the instruction that I did less direct instruction and more coaching on resulted in greater gains, or 2) students didn’t want to re-write their previous questions on the second Question assignment. Next time I’ll try to make sure I assess the first Question assignment and then have them add to it for the second one.

I’m planning to have another book fair next year. My husband helped for the whole thing, and commented that the kids seemed to be really enthusiastic. We have an amazing community of readers, and I want to make it even better. I also hope to have a Library Guild again, with some re-structuring. We had 22 kids here on the last day–amazing!

May Update

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I’m starting to feel like a librarian again, and not just a clerk. The help of the sub, although too intermittent to allow for instruction, has helped me get into the office and work on the books. I also have had the help of a grad student who is studying to be a Young Adult librarian; she’s getting some hands-on practice in modifying title and copy records in the catalog.

My friend Jimbo helped me prioritize all of those things that overwhelmed me. Here’s my list:
1. Grade the dang papers
2. Get the professional development hours squared away
3. Get the Library Guild to shelve books
4. Get the book fair books processed and in the hands of students
5. Tweak the cataloging on the new books

It took me a couple of weeks, but I got the papers graded. I need to go back and crunch the data to show student process, but the legwork is done. I need to finish adding up my professional development hours. The shelving has been taken care of by the wonderful sub and my adult volunteers, and the Guild has been straightening the shelves each week. The book fair books are all done, and I’m partway through the first box of the 14 boxes of new books. Because they come fully processed, there’s not much to be done, and I go through those fairly quickly when I have time to concentrate on them. Because I can’t switch back and forth between the Catalog and Circulation tabs without losing my work, I switch back and forth between the circ desk computer and my office computer. Having someone at the circ desk makes it possible to get these books done.

It’s been a month since I unpacked those 14 boxes of books. The end of the school year is fast approaching, and although I’m definitely making progress, I don’t know if I’m going to get them all put out before circulation stops for the year, probably at the end of May. At any rate, I’m on my way to putting good books in the hands of our students.

Professional Virtual World Adventures

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Last summer I took a class with the NorthTIER consortium on Virtual Worlds and Games in Education, taught by Laura Briggs. My initial goal was to learn to use Second Life to attend VSTE meetings and professional development sessions online. I learned so much more–my professional and personal worlds have been expanded exponentially.

When I started using Second Life (SL), I had a steep learning cliff to conquer. It took me a week to learn how to move my avatar around effectively, and a month before I learned how to change my clothes. I persisted because the people I met there were so helpful and welcoming that I wanted to participate in the communities that I found.

As you know, my job as a solo school librarian is extremely isolating. I am a team of one, in a building of 800+ people. My district is kind enough to let me run SL in school, making it possible to attend inworld meetings during the day, and to network with people on my few occasions for downtime. I am able, from my computer here, to have meaningful professional interchanges with people all over the world.

Currently I am a member of 18 different educational groups in Second Life. I attend Virtual Pioneers meetings on Sunday nights; VSTE meetings on Monday nights; ISTE office hours on Tuesday nights; ISTE meetings and socials, plus VSTE planning meetings, on Wednesday nights; VWER meetings on Thursdays after school; and BIO-SE and Nonprofit Commons meetings on Fridays during school. Because the latter two are conducted in chat rather than voice, I can follow along even when I have classes coming in to check out books. I consider myself a liaison between all of the groups, and I do lots of cross-postings of meeting notifications among all of them. I like being able to connect people together, and help create community. I’ve been enriched so much–it’s a virtual world, but the people are real.

Library Guild, Week 2

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I walked past the heavily-used manga section this morning, and it looked like one of the shelves threw up on the floor–there were books everywhere. When I had a chance to go back later and fix it, everything looked fine! I think it was my Library Guild at work.

This after-school club started last week. I had 30 students show up for the first meeting, and 34 for the second! I’ve given out over 110 permission slips so far and collected 48, with more coming in. I think I’m going to have to cap the number of students. What an incredible response! They’ve all been really well-behaved, busily working on book displays and posters for our upcoming book fair.

This summer for my class on Virtual Environments and Games in Education I read Jane McGonigle’s book Reality Is Broken, and it gave me the idea to use Chore Wars so the Guild members can get XP (experience points) for what they do. So far it’s been a fair amount of work to set up, but I think things will be easier as the kids get into a routine. Huzzah for the Library Guild!