Category Archives: Minecraft

Remote School Librarianship – 4th Quarter 2020-2021 (cont’d)

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Minecraft with the Gaming Club

This has been the highlight of my year. Although not a lot of students show up to play on our shared server, most of them are regulars. What a great group of kids! They are generous and kind, and when they make a mistake, they apologize for it. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s a different group of students, but it’s worked much better to do this remotely than in person. I hope I’ll be able to continue this next year.

Overdue Books

I have no idea how to get the checked out books back from our students. I’ve felt so overwhelmed about the whole thing. I’ve tried sending out Canvas notices, and have put numerous articles in the weekly newsletter. I’ve explained how students can tell what they have checked out, and I’ve begged them to return their books. I have not figured out an expedient way to send out individual overdue notices. I would have to hand-email each student personally, and it’s just not practical with our numbers. I’ve just marked the books Lost that were due before March 13, 2020, and our Library Assistant is putting them into our school’s billing system. I’m sure I’m going to get lots of “But I didn’t know I had that!” and “But I returned that last year!”.

I’ve always felt torn about overdue book policies. On the one hand, my primary responsibility is providing students with access to materials and information. On the other hand, the library can’t afford to just let all of the books walk away. I’ve never charged overdue fines at all. I do charge the replacement cost for lost books, but if a student or parent says they cannot pay it, I’ll waive it.

Having the buildings closed during the pandemic has been an added challenge. Students couldn’t return books after March 13, 2020, and they couldn’t return them easily this year. I’m going to have to eventually mark all of the overdue books Lost, but I’m on the fence about charging replacement costs for them. I might have a limit, like charging no more than $10, for instance. Once the students are back in the building next year, I can send out paper notices, and hopefully see them all in orientation classes at the beginning of the year. I may have to spend a lot of next year’s budget replacing books, but I don’t want to replace them before I have a chance to get them back.

Reflections

Once some students returned to the building, it was even more rare to have someone show up to Lunch Bunch. It took a while for the IT department to make it so I could host a shared world while I was at school, but once that happened, there were students joining me every day. Hopefully they weren’t missing class to do it. I think all of them were joining from home, not school.

I spite of my starfish theory, I have felt really useless as a teacher-librarian this year. I don’t take it personally, although this has always been a challenge at this school. I can’t even imagine how overwhelmed and overworked our teachers have been, just trying to “catch up”. There have been no allowances from the state about goals. Teachers are expected to “cover the material” (I hate that phrase), and students are expected to pass the same standardized tests as in previous years. The other phrase I hate is “falling behind”–falling behind what??!? We are all in the same boat with this pandemic, and it’s not even over yet. I get really angry when I think about how unnecessarily unfair this is to our teachers and our children.

That being said, I have been able to use this year to get a lot done with the collection. Hopefully that will pay off as more students return to the building. More students are reading eBooks, and using our online catalog. I think students have missed being able to come in and browse the shelves. I’m grateful that I had the chance to work with our 6th graders some, at least. I finally learned to edit videos. And I loved working from home! I especially liked video conference meetings, because I could hear everyone. I’m not going to forget this year, and I’m going to try to remember the things I’ve learned.

Remote School Librarianship – 3rd Quarter 2020-2021 (cont’d)

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Well, as you can see, my reflections dropped of rapidly once we returned to the building. I’ve been working on a big collection development project; more about that later in 4th Quarter reflections.

Returning to the Building

All staff was required to return to working in the building on February 25th, except for Mondays (asynchronous days). We’ll be continuing this until the end of the school year. I was very nervous about this, on two counts: the risk of COVID-19 infection, and the challenges of being able to understand what people are saying. The latter was the most worrisome to me.

Auditory Challenges

I have had a hearing impairment since I was 5 years old, and have worn hearing aids for most of my life. This resulted (in my non-medical opinion) from a severe reaction to the pertussis vaccine at that age. The result was nerve deafness, which basically means brain damage. There is nothing physically wrong with my ears. I have come to realize that increasing the volume level is only part of the solution to understanding. Auditory processing difficulties are a large part of my hearing impairment. This means that I am constantly gathering clues from a number of sources, including sound, context, and reading lips, to understand meaning. Under normal face-to-face circumstances with a small number of people, I can do this quickly and accurately enough that people don’t realize I have a hearing impairment. COVID-19 has changed this.

As you can imagine, everyone wearing masks has been a nightmare for lip-readers. My audiologist explained that my midrange hearing loss means that I have trouble distinguishing between consonant sounds. Lip-reading replaces that information. Without that, I’m basically hearing only vowel sounds–try that and see how it works for you. If I have context, I can make good guesses about what’s being said, but if someone starts talking to me and I have no idea what they’re talking about, my guesses get pretty random. Sometimes I can’t even tell that someone has started talking to me, leading people to believe that I’m purposefully ignoring them.

Here are some things I’ve tried:

  • Clear plastic masks don’t help. It doesn’t work if I’m the one wearing it–everyone else has to be wearing them for it to work. Also, they steam up, and often press against the wearer’s lips, so I can’t read their lips anyway.
  • Having people stand 6 feet away and pull their mask down is not recommended, but often is the quickest way to understand them.
  • Having paper and pencil so the speaker can write to me is very helpful, but extremely awkward, especially for students. Sometimes that’s the only way I can understand proper nouns, or names.

Fortunately our meetings are still held in Zoom, but sometimes people need to wear masks while they’re attending. Most of the time, to be honest, I stay in my office and avoid talking to people.

Library Lunch Bunch

The bell schedule changed once teachers and students started to come back to the building. Now, instead of 4 blocks with an hour for lunch, we have 8 blocks with 24 minutes for lunch.
The four lunch shifts run from 10:36 to 12:36. I expanded my office hours to run from 10:30 to 12:40, Tuesday through Friday. I rarely have anyone show up, but every now and then Yordy comes in to hear more of my read-aloud of So You Want to Be a Wizard, and sometimes Gaming Club players come in to play Minecraft. At least I’m remaining available.

Gaming Club: Minecraft

Quite a few students have signed up for a Minecraft: Education Edition account. They have to fill out a Google form to join the Gaming Club Canvas course, then they have to fill out a Player Agreement to get a Minecraft account. Our Network Engineer is usually very prompt about creating accounts. Only a few students play on our shared server, which I run during lunch and during Gaming Club, but they’re welcome to play with other Gaming Club friends, too. I’m betting their thinking skills will improve just from playing.

Business as Usual

On Mondays I go out with the Bookmobile. Tuesdays through Fridays I’m available for Library Lunch Bunch. I spend most of Wednesdays in grade level meetings. I submit a weekly newsletter article for publication on Fridays. The rest of the time, I’m either ordering new books (eBooks and print) or cataloging new books.

Library Plan for Hybrid Instruction

Here’s the email that I sent to staff. I don’t know if anyone actually read it.

As of now, this is our plan for hybrid instruction:

  • The library is used for Ms. Bollinger’s classes
  • The Reading Terraces (outside, next to the library) are open for anyone
    • First come, first served
    • Please let us know when you need one unlocked
    • Students must be accompanied by an adult
  • Library stacks (shelves) will be closed except for library staff
  • Students and teachers may continue to put print books on hold (reserve) in the library catalog
    • Reserve books for hybrid students delivered to ELA classrooms upon request
    • Reserve books for remote students placed in front office for pickup
    • Reserve books for all students placed on Bookmobiles on Mondays, weather permitting
  • Instructional collaboration is still strongly encouraged
    • Library instruction will be remote from library office
    • I am happy to pull print books and/or recommend online resources for you
  • Library Lunch Bunch continues on Zoom
    • Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm (all lunch blocks)
    • Students are responsible for getting back to class on time

As always, please let us know of any way we can help you. We are here to support your instruction and your students’ learning.

New Books

Most of our books come in fully processed and cataloged, but I still tweak the records, and often the spine labels. One advantage of running my own library is that I get to decide how things are organized. Here are some changes I make:

  • change the copy price to the actual retail price, rounded up to the nearest dollar
  • add Genre tags (655) and Local tags (658)
  • remove subject headings from Library of Congress (the Juvenile fiction sub-tag makes it look like nonfiction in our catalog)
  • change 741.5 classifications to F for fiction, or the Dewey class for nonfiction – the only books that stay in 741.5 are biographies and how-to books
  • series books have Vol.x at the bottom of the spine label, and the series name added to the book title in the catalog record (I wish that for multiple series by the same author, I had used Vol.1a, Vol.1b, etc., so shelvers could keep series together more easily.)
  • if a series is written by multiple authors, I classify the books under the series name
  • sometimes I change the Dewey class if it makes more sense for our collection
  • sometimes the catalog record we receive is wrong, so I fix it

Although the books are fully processed, we still need to stamp our address inside and check the books in before displaying or shelving them. We also put a New Books bookmark in each one. Our Library Assistant takes care of that. Since students aren’t directly using the library, we’re just shelving the new books.

Reflections

I feel vastly under-used this year. I’m not letting myself worry about it, since I know the classroom teachers are overwhelmed from the constantly changing situation. It seems like as soon as we get used to one way of conducting classes, we have to change to something different. I’m grateful that I have plenty to do behind the scenes in the library, both remotely and in person. I’m also very thankful that I have my own office to work in, both for safety and for focus.

Remote School Librarianship – 2nd Quarter 2020-2021

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The school year is almost half over! Here’s how things stand presently. We had some students back in the buildings last fall (some special education [SPED] and English language learners [ELL]), but when COVID-19 infection rates went up, we went back to 100% virtual. I am really thankful that our district is looking out for our safety. A very large neighboring district, which shall go unnamed, still has some students and teachers in the buildings. I’m very grateful that I don’t have school-age children of my own, as that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, as we say around here.

I am still working almost 100% remotely. I go in for the Bookmobile on some Mondays, and when our Library Assistant is out I go in to pull book holds for students when they come up. We don’t have many students who come out to the Bookmobiles, but the number of books on hold is increasing, and the number actually picked up is increasing, too.

I liken my work this year to that old story of the man and the starfish on the beach. Once upon a time, a man saw hundreds of starfish stranded on the beach at low tide. He started picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean so they wouldn’t die. Another man came along and commented that it wouldn’t make any difference —  the other man couldn’t possible throw all of those starfish back in. The first man threw another starfish back in and said, “Yeah, but it made a difference for that one!”

starfish     

I may not be making a difference for everyone, but I am definitely helping the students and teachers that I have worked with.

Minecraft

Also on the plus side, Minecraft! Some of the other teachers formed a Gaming Club, online after school. The principal emailed me and asked if I would be willing to lead a Minecraft component for the club. I said Sure! and got to work. First, I needed to convince district admin to allow an application that had been blocked (for distracting students from classes). This was denied at first, then a few days later I got a request for student names, and accounts were created for them. Apparently the per-student fee is included in our district’s Microsoft 365 license, so we don’t need to pay anything to play Minecraft. Each student who signs up has to have a Microsoft account set up for them, and permission to download and install the Minecraft client on their Chromebook. So far there are over 100 students in the Gaming Club, and over 30 with Minecraft accounts.

I discovered after the first session that the students are able to host sessions in their own worlds. Given some of the disputes which arose in Minecraft in the previous Games Club that I ran, I was skeptical about this. So far, however, students seem to be getting along and helping each other out. Only a small number of the students have actually come to Gaming Club, but the ones who participate seem to be enjoying it. I have them fill out a Google form in which they agree to be kind, respectful, and responsible when playing. Hopefully this sets the tone. A couple of days ago I started running the Minecraft server during the lunch break, and several students have come in to play then. This is yet another way to build student relationships, to help them become more resilient.

Information Literacy

Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and use information to solve problems. We use this for everything  from simple tasks like finding a friend’s phone number, to complex problems like finding a cure for cancer. Especially today, we are swimming in a sea of so much information, much of it wrong, that we could drown in it.

I believe that information literacy is the most essential quality that our students need to have by the time they leave school.

Years ago, at another middle school, I was able to collaboratively teach a 2-3 week research project for each grade level, every year. I’ve been trying to achieve that at my current school, to no avail. Research is now a part of our state Language Arts standards, and every language arts class in our school does a research project, but I am rarely even aware of what they’re working on, let alone helping with it. I don’t know where the disconnect is, and nobody else seems really bothered by this. I do what I can, when I can.

This quarter I sent out information about our eBook resources to the science teachers. A 6th grade science teacher asked if I would show her students how to access these resources. After I scheduled her classes, the other 6th grade science teacher asked if I would come to her classes, too. I happily agreed. This year the science and social studies classes are taught year-long, on alternating A and B days, for full block classes. I came to each class’s Zoom session for 35 minutes, during which I did a hands-on workshop showing the students how to use the resources, and where they could find more help on the library’s Canvas course. I encouraged student engagement by giving directions both in voice and in text, and asking students to type a Y in chat after they had completed a step. The classroom teachers also monitored student activity with GoGuardian, which lets them see what students are doing on their laptops in real time. They could also use this to help students troubleshoot problems.

Reflections

On a personal level, I know I’m probably in the minority, but I am really enjoying this time. Aside from the worries about the world outside, I love being home. My husband is here with me, and we keep each other company. I’m introverted, so when I’m alone, the solitude feeds my soul. Everything I need is here. I’m getting to the age where I’m thinking about retirement, and this is a nice little taste.

On a professional level, I am very slowly, but steadily, adding to the number of student and teacher connections that I’m making. I feel like I’m making a lot of progress with 6th grade, but I’d like to figure out how to get involved in 7th and 8th grade classes, too. In the meantime, this gives me time to work on basic library operations like ordering and cataloging books.

 

Building Community in Minecraft

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As I noted in an earlier blog, I was able to teach a one-week course in Minecraft at my middle school, twice a year. During the 2015-2016 school year, in the two courses on Minecraft and Media Literacy, I noticed some troubling episodes of griefing (other players who, innocently or maliciously, cause trouble for others.) Objects built in Minecraft do not have builder identifiers like those in SL and similar worlds, and anyone can make or break objects anywhere. When things are damaged, students often do not have the maturity to admit when they’ve done something wrong, which makes it really difficult to figure out who damaged something. I wanted to explore community-building in Minecraft to see if this could be addressed socially, rather than punitively. I decided that my 2016-2017 Intersession courses would be on Community Building in Minecraft.

I set up the course so we would be addressing community-building on two fronts: our community as a class, and the community that we would (literally) build in Minecraft. I again housed the course content in our Canvas LMS. Our school uses Capturing Kids’ Hearts (CKH),which involves building a social contract together at the beginning of each course. Even though we would only be together for a week, it’s a worthwhile process. I also had the students do a Minecraft experience survey and daily reflective writing.

I spent quite a bit of time before the course started setting up a place for the students to build. I used the special MinecraftEdu blocks to make a border around a large area; lay down blocks to mark off and label 4 quadrants; and set up a survival hut in the middle.

For the first day, they played in Survival mode for about an hour, then we talked about which resources we needed to survive, and how we could obtain them. We also brainstormed about the same things in the physical world. My reflection from Day 1 included this: “The Minecraft Experience survey showed a wide range of experience levels, but most students seem to be familiar with at least the basics of Minecraft. In the survival world, they did a good job of finding and identifying resources. For the most part, they played without incident. I was able to play, myself, which doesn’t always happen. One student told me later that he felt like he was being griefed by someone, but didn’t feel like he could talk to the person without getting upset. I suggested approaching any situation like that with the most charitable explanation in mind–in this case, that the person probably didn’t mean it and was trying to fix it later.”

My reflection for Day 2 included: “We spent about an hour playing in the survival world. I had meant to let them play for about 10 minutes, but we were all having so much fun that we just kept on going. Afterwards a really productive discussion developed about what contributions people had made to the community, how trade could be handled, and what jobs and roles are needed in a community. That segued nicely into talking about what buildings we need in a community. I showed them a map of [our small city] with some of the community buildings located, then we listed what buildings we could include in our Minecraft community. We then rated them as essential (yellow), luxury (blue), or in-between (green). The 6th graders left on a field trip at 9:00, so they missed most of the discussion and planning.

“Next, we started planning the community on paper. One student drew a grid, and planned a railroad around the perimeter. Other students cut out their planned buildings on paper and embellished them with markers. There was lots of discussion about building methods.”

On the third day the students divided up into smaller groups to design and build together. Some students wanted to work individually, which was fine. Once we got inworld, each group had to find a spot on which to build, and write down the team members’ names and the Minecraft coordinates for their group. They continued to write a short reflection each day. I asked guiding questions such as:

  • What have you done in Minecraft today?
  • How are you helping your team?
  • How are others helping you?
  • What challenges are you facing in this class?
  • How do you feel about your experiences in this class so far, and why?

I found it worked best to have them do the reflection in the beginning of each class, about the previous day. That set the tone for the class, and gave them something to do while we got started. Of course, they weren’t being graded, so they didn’t have to meet any standards, but for the most part they wrote thoughtfully and quietly.

We had had some trouble with griefing, so we talked about it together but didn’t come to any conclusions or consensus about what to do about it. For the beginning of Day 4, I had them reflect on these questions:

  • What else would you like to learn to do in Minecraft?
  • Describe at least one example of griefing that you’ve observed in this class. How did it make different people feel? What are some good ways to deal with griefing?
  • What you plan to start with today
  • What you need to do to finish your build
  • How you have grown during this class
  • How do you feel about your experiences in this class so far, and why?
    What have you learned about yourself through this class?

I showed the students how to take and find screenshots of their builds, and I had hoped that they could put them together and make a short machinima like we had done for the Media Literacy course. They really weren’t too interested, and we just ran out of time. They could walk around inworld and visit each other’s buildings, and that made it easy for them to share what they were doing. This video shows some of their innovative ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ce5ZROQJU

I’d like to say that we developed a close-knit and kind community in this course, but I really couldn’t conclude that it made much of a difference. That said, I do think that, for the most part, the students worked well together, had a lot of fun, and learned a lot.

Minecraft in Survival Mode

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EVO Minecraft MOOC Week 4: Survival #evomc16

First of all, I have to say, I LOVE survival mode. I’ve learned more about Minecraft (and about myself) in survival, both in singleplayer and multiplayer worlds, than I ever have in creative mode.

I am an explorer, not a builder. I know how to build basic things, but it doesn’t really interest me. I tend to only build in one style (medieval/cabin) when I build something formal, and most of the time what I build are shelters where I’m exploring. When I find a good place, I’ll hole in somewhere and explore the area or mine until I get tired of it. In our EVO world, I hadn’t built anything myself until I got to an island in the middle of the sea, where I built a shelter in a cave.

Most of the time, if night falls while I’m exploring, I build a tower of gravel to stand on. I use gravel because I can get some flint from it when I break it down to get back to the ground. If I’m the only one on the server at the time, I’ll make a dirt platform above the ground like this one, so I can make a bed and sleep. I try to always keep a good supply of wood and wool with me, as well as sand, dirt, cobble, and gravel.

2016-02-24_21.21.29

I was really frustrated in the early days of this server because it kept lagging really badly and causing me to crash. I tried making maps, but had a lot of difficulty with losing them. The one time I was killed was from lag, and I lost everything underground somewhere. Eventually I went back, accumulated more resources, made more maps, and started exploring again. These are the maps mounted in the Admin Building near spawn.

2016-02-28_22.38.28 from Aaron

I take screenshots with inworld maps and F3 coordinates to mark waypoints and interesting places. On my computer, I move the screenshots to a different folder and sort them into subfolders depending on which server or realm they’re from. The screenshot below shows an ocean monument in the center, with nearby coordinates and the location (white arrow) on the map. The green arrow on the map shows where it is framed, so I can identify a home point when I’m away.

2016-02-12_21.07.18

I really enjoy playing with the other people on this (and every other) server. I’m amazed at the incredible things that people build, and the resources they offer to others. I hope others will make copies of my maps and use them to explore. Apparently the recent update to Minecraft 1.9 added new map features–I can’t wait to use them!

The VSTE Minecraft Server for Teachers

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EVO Minecraft MOOC Week 3: Networking #evomc16

This MOOC has been a great place to find like-minded educators using Minecraft. Other groups I’m part of include two other communities on Google+: Minecraft in Education and MinecraftEdu, as well as Bron Stuckey’s community, The Minecraft Experience (http://www.minecraftexperience.net/). My favorite Minecraft community, though, is my friends and colleagues on the VSTE Minecraft server.

The Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE), an affiliate of ISTE, has been exploring virtual worlds since 2008 (http://www.vste.org/index/SL.html), when it opened VSTE Island in Second Life. I’ve been active with VSTE in virtual worlds since 2012, and have found its members to be among the most active education professionals around. VSTE maintains a Minecraft vanilla server in Creative mode for teachers who want to learn to play.

I hosted a tour of the server for the EVO Minecraft MOOC last Sunday, Feb. 7. It was fun to introduce some more teachers to the server, and show off some of our builds. We especially enjoyed DrNosall’s new underground roller coaster, MrZwaaa’s redstone displays, and MrsGielen’s Winter Castle.

2016-02-14_14.51.49 2016-02-15_09.27.05 2016-02-14_14.47.52

Educators need to be approved and whitelisted for this server before entering it. Once approved, they are welcome to come in any time and play. We are a community of learners, respecting and sharing each other’s builds and ideas.

 

Inworld Maps in Minecraft

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EVO Minecraft MOOC – Week 2 Reflection #evomc16

I’ve had fun hanging out on the server this week. I built a library to house my map wall, and made a couple of maps.

Ghostraven Library on superflat EVO Minecraft MOOC server

Ghostraven Library on superflat EVO Minecraft MOOC server

At the 4/4 scale there isn’t much point to doing maps in a superflat world like this, but it was good practice. It seems like a lot of people don’t know about making inworld maps in Minecraft. (It’s confusing because “map” in Minecraft also means a created world that can be replicated.)

Two maps mounted on a wall in the Ghostraven Library

Two maps mounted on a wall in the Ghostraven Library

The maps below show the originals that are mounted on the wall above. Inworld maps in Minecraft only show places that the person has explored.

The northern map in the EVO Minecraft MOOC superflat server

The northern map in the EVO Minecraft MOOC superflat server

The southern map in the EVO Minecraft MOOC superflat server

The southern map in the EVO Minecraft MOOC superflat server

When someone has a copy of a map in their hotbar, all of the copies of that map, including the one on the wall, are updated. This can be really useful for a group exploring a new world. As you travel through the world you can see your position on the map. If you are still in the area where the map is mounted, that place is marked in green.

This Minecraft map wall (from a different server) shows maps of the same location in gradually increasing scale, from close-up (1/4) to zoomed out (4/4).

Minecraft map wall showing scale

Minecraft map wall showing scale

This is a composite map wall of the same area, with all of the maps completely zoomed out (4/4 scale)

This is a composite map wall of the same area, with all of the maps completely zoomed out (4/4 scale).

This is a composite map wall of the same area, with all of the maps completely zoomed out (4/4 scale).

This Minecraft Wiki article explains maps more thoroughly: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Map_(Item). I have a terrible sense of direction, inworld and out, and having a map with me helps me stay on track.

Games and Play in Professional Development

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EVO Minecraft MOOC – Week 1 Reflection #evomc16

I’m reading one of the suggested articles: Kuhn, Jeff. (2015). Meaningful Play – Making Professional Development Fun. TESL-EJ 18, 4:1-8. Available: http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej72/int.pdf and http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume18/ej72/ej72int/. I’ve also been thinking that gaming literacy is something many of our teachers have been neglecting. Inhabiting a virtual world such as Second Life or Minecraft helps with this, too. Learning to move and interact with people and objects in a 3D virtual environment is becoming a life skill.

Kuhn writes, “Good games and good learning are hard to tell apart.” Unfortunately, many, many games used for educational purposes are didactic, for the sole purpose of teaching some learning objective(s). This is analogous to didactic children’s books, most of which do not deserve the label “literature.” Students have learned to mistrust “educational” games as ways to manipulate them into learning something inherently boring.

This quote from Vance Stevens resonates with me, too: “the nature of the game changed for me once we got a community into the mix.” When I started playing Minecraft, I started out in singleplayer creative mode, then moved to the VSTE Minecraft server in creative mode; then singleplayer survival mode, followed by a survival mode server with some friends from Second Life. Being able to interact with other people and their creations inworld makes all the difference in my engagement with the world.

As the librarian in my school, one of the best ways for me to influence the curriculum is through offering professional development for our teachers. In my experience, teachers have a lot of difficulty giving themselves time to play. I led a Minecraft 101 concurrent session at our most recent VSTE conference (Virginia Society for Technology in Education), and as soon as the initial talking and setup part of the session was over, most of the people left rather than play. In the US, there seems to be a prevailing attitude that play is a waste of time. It’s hard to know how to overcome this, but I think it’s a crucial part of promoting games in professional development.

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.