Survive the Night

In this assignment we were tasked with surviving the first night of a game of Minecraft in survival mode. When I read the introduction to the assignment, I thought, "oh great, this'll be boring because I already can make it through a night." Typically when I play, I just build a giant tower of dirt to stand on top of for the entire night. After a few nights, I've found coal and built a lovely house in a great location. At the end of the instructions though, I found that the rules stipulated that we were to build a house to get through the night.

So, when I started the assignment, I wasn't sure how it would go. I realized I would need a game plan. I worried about being eaten at night because creatures would spawn in the dark and collecting coal is hard. Then, I remembered that one can also make charcoal to build torches. I knew I would need to survey my environment and quickly decide where to build. This is hard for me because I am quite a perfectionist. In my personal life for the last couple of years I have been working hard on "good enough." It's been a struggle and I've come a LONG way.

When doing the assignment, I actually did run through a day and night cycle. It went fast and I realized in hindsight I could have narrated it as a Twitch-style run-through. Now, this blog post would be enough for the grade, but I was inspired by the "macaroni art" and "interpretive dance" options. So, I decided to make a video! Best part is the medium ;) I think you will enjoy it!

Blowing up the grade book

Professor Haskell discusses in his presentation why the way we educate our children needs to change.

He teaches his EdTech 531: Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds in this new manner. It has been strange for me to take this class. I didn't feel comfortable for the first 5 weeks or so because I kept feeling like I was missing something. I kept worrying that there was some aspect of the class I wasn't understanding or some task I wasn't fulfilling. I believe this is because of what he calls "the game" found in other classes using the traditional method of education. Many classes have so much ambiguity that missing key parts is inevitable. I had a class last fall that was exactly like this! On the surface, this class feels like it may also be ambiguous in the requirements because the expectations are so straightforward. It felt there must be more to the game that I was missing.

Because it is so easy to miss key requirements, the current model of teaching is unfair to many students. To keep from missing parts, there must be frequent feedback from teachers and often intervention from parents. Most parents do not have the luxury of devoting so much time to their children's schooling. Also, many children have a greater number of after-school activities than ever. High school students often have sports, music, and jobs to participate in after school leaving little to no time for homework. Therefore, assigning homework is only reasonable for student's whose parents have the time to aid in its completion.

Supporters of the traditional method will respond with the idea that due dates are necessary for assignments citing that students are lazy and will take more time than necessary without being pushed to complete. Dr. Haskell comments that "if given a week, we'll take a week." His argument is that students are preforming triage and determining which things in their lives must be accomplished first. Often we forget that play time is imperative to development. We neglect taking breaks. Without due dates, learners can tackle tasks at their own pace.

Along with cosing when to do an assignment, getting rid of due dates gives students the opportunity to decide which assignments to do. When they decide for themselves, they will have more investment in their own learning. When I have a choice of what I learn, I put more into the assignments. Students get back what they put in. Teachers of the traditional style will argue that given students so many choices will create a greater workload for themselves. It is true that there will need to be more options of assignments for the students to pick from, but when comparing the time needed to create this extra curriculum, I'd ask how much extra work is honestly needed. Time required to create and grade homework along with meeting with parents regarding the completion of homework, would be cut from teachers' days. Teachers would also find benefit in their own lives in that they could move at their own pace and maybe spend less unpaid time grading papers.

One last point I feel needs making is about "the real world." During school I remember constantly being told some type of variant of the way the "real world" works. The traditional style of teaching is nothing like the "real world." No one will call my mommy if I don't do my work. Exceptional work never got me anything from school. Going above and beyond has gotten me raise after raise in my career. Finally, at 30, I'm learning the skills necessary to get ahead in my work. Going through an educational system that more closely mirrored the way it actually works in life would have made things a great deal easier.

Let's be creative quest

This quest required us to use Minecraft's Creative Mode to explore and practice skills. I typically do not like Creative. I have always felt it was a cop out. I would watch children flying around in Creative and bragging about all of their diamond gear. I was probably just jealous because in all of my years playing, I've only created 2 diamond pickaxes. Now, after having seen some of the beautiful structures people have created, I understand the point. I still don't like it, though :P

Also, I just learned how to code adding a video to webpages and I am quite proud of myself!

Second Life

Second Life is a gigantic virtual world. A user creates an avatar that they can customize over and over again. Users can also create their own content. The creators realized that the users were more interested in creative, self-created content, so they changed their view from it being a game to a platform for creativity.

Second Life launched in 2003 and became a big deal. It started to decline around 2008, though. Many schools used it for education previously. Now, though, it is dated and infrequently used.

It seems to be quite usable in general. I am a creative person so when I read that the creators opened it up for users to create their own experience, I became excited to put more time into making my own content.