“Don’t Tease Me Because of My Skin”

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Bob Kahn

The Eaglecraft server’s wings were clipped on Monday because members of the new Exploratory were clashing with members of the previous group. In a nut shell, players were griefing each other and stealing from each other’s chests, and then it got ugly when someone created some bad signage with inappropriate language. Off it went until this was sorted out. So we had a meeting today at lunch for all those students interested in continuing to play on the server. If the didn’t come to the meeting, they would not be playing any more. The meeting was very productive but two comments stuck out in my mind.

1st. One student expressed concern that if we simply played the game as it was meant to be played, pvp in survival, that it would just become like Animal Farm (seventh graders are reading in English) as they collected too much power. A connection to curriculum, cool!

2nd. Another student asked that there be something in the Code of Conduct about not teasing because of the skin he had chosen. Wow! How fitting after having a very effective and accessible first Black History Month Assembly. “Don’t tease me outside of the game because of the skin I chose.” So interesting; and here he gets to choose his skin. In the real world…

Article for School Newsletter

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Mechanics and Mysteries of Minecraft in the Middle Division

Playing in the local sandbox as a boy provided a great source of fun for me. Before my mom could even stop the car, the door would fling open, and I’d be running towards the sand. My shoes would fly off and the sand would instantly fill the spaces between my toes. And the building! With molds, buckets and shovels strewn all over the place, my friends and I created whole cities with lakes and rivers. Little plastic characters inhabited our worlds. One day a friend’s little sister decided to hurl a handful of sand into my face. Imagine hundreds of grainy sand particles underneath your eyelids. I spent what seemed like hours in the doctor’s office having the sand removed, grain by grain.

The sand in many of today’s sandboxes cannot get thrown into your face or fill the spaces between your toes. These sandboxes exist in the digital world of your computer or cyberspace. One such digital sandbox is called Minecraft, a game in which players use textured blocks of different materials to build or create anything they can imagine. Anything! Continue reading →

Eaglecraft Community Code of Conduct

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Today was the first day with my new Exploratory group on our Eaglecraft server. I tried unsuccessfully to get them to create a mission statement for our server, but they were just not interested. Then I thought about shutting down the server until they created the document. Then I just decided to do it myself. I would be very interested in anyone else’s thoughts about my process and/or my document. Thanks in advance.

Eaglecraft Community Code of Conduct

Eaglecraft is a Minecraft Server run by Middle Division students at Brentwood School. The purpose of this server is for students to have a safe place to play, build and collaborate in Minecraft. Responsible members of this server will respect each other and the rules of the server. Once whitelisted, you become a member of the Eaglecraft community. This means that you agree to:

Respect other players, their belongings, their skins and their builds. This means no raiding or griefing.
Not to use hacks to cheat the game or other players.
Not to use bad language or hurtful words while chatting or on signs.
Not to tease any one based on their appearance in game or how they play.

If a player chooses not to abide by the rules then he or she will be choosing suspension from the server. Abiding by these rules will ensure that all members of the Eaglecraft community feel included and safe to explore the world of Minecraft.

What Did I Do Wrong?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Exploratory Fair

Maybe the picture says it all. Today we had our Exploratory fair for students to sign up for second semester Exploratory class. After being the first to fill up in the fall, I was expecting another full class. I made an announcement that there were spots for 10 boys and 10 girls. No eruption of excitement like last time. Hmm. This is different. I think you can see where this is going. When it was all over, only 6 boys had signed up. What did I do wrong? The good news: these boys know the game and have started their own servers. Maybe it is an opportunity for me to really learn from them and for us to do some incredible creating together instead of simply playing the game. My sails are luffing a bit, but when life gives you lemons….

Girls Learning Minecraft with MinecraftEdu

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Bob Kahn

There were 20 boys in my Exploratory class last semester. The next Exploratory class begins in two weeks and I hope to get some girls to sign up. I have been making references to Minecraft in my science classes this last semester and I heard many girls say things like, “What’s Mindcraft?” “I don’t know anything about Mindcraft.” I think you can see the problem here. So, I announced at assembly that I would offer a training course at lunch the next day for anybody interested in learning the game that was sweeping through our middle school. I knew everyone would forget, so I went around to some lunch tables and encouraged some of my girl students to bring their lunch and come up to the classroom. I think it is very important to get girls involved in technology, and Minecraft is a great way to do this. MinecraftEdu provides an excellent education version with an easy to use tutorial world for students. I watched a video by the Minecraft Teacher called Using MinecraftEdu – Part 1 – Introduction to learn how to set up the server tool; several clicks of the mouse and the server was up and running.

Some of my observations of the girls include: – how engaged they were in the game. – how social they were. – their physical proximity to each other; they preferred to bring the laptops near each other, rather than work separately at the lab stations. Safety in numbers, maybe, while trying something new?

Did I miss anything?

Orienteering: 3rd Strike or Charmed?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Group Screenshot Before Orienteering Mission

Thursday was the last chance for the Orienteering Quest with this Exploratory group. Strangely, I was excited and nervous about how it would go; it’s only 30 minutes out of my week. Would it be a “3rd strike; You’re out!” or “3rd time’s a charm.”

Success! 3rd time’s a charm! The kids appeared in the reinforced spawn site, all fluttering about. This was the first time they were all gathered together at the spawn site long enough to take a screenshot and without cleverly figuring out some way to escape. Aren’t they a good-looking group!

Some of my favorite quotes from the activity: “We have to take a screenshot eating apples.” “We won! Do we get candy?” “A 10!” One student’s response to my asking him to rate the activity on a scale 1 to 10.

Please read on. I promise you will dig this. Continue reading →

Orienteering 3rd Attempt

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Bob Kahn

So this is it. My last session with this particular Exploratory class. My last chance to redeem myself and send them off with a completed activity.

A switch was and linked to an iron door with redstone to let the kids lose when the game begins. Hopefully, the server will cooperate.

Sun setting on the Orienteering activity spawn site. Symbolic of the 3rd and last attempt.

Orienteering 2nd Attempt

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Spawn area rebuilt———————————————————check!
Signs rewritten————————————————————–check!
Worldguard tested and functioning properly————————-check!
Treasure chests restocked with apples——————————–check!

Time for Exploratory. Been looking forward to it all day.

“New update available. Would you like to update?”

Nooooooooooooooo! Don’t do it. Too late.

Will try for the third time next week.

For some reason, when Mojang comes out with a new version, Bukkit does not have the multiplayer server updates ready and available. So if you update to the new version, all the servers that you were playing on would not be available, because they cannot run the new version. I asked a student, why doesn’t Mojang let Bukkit know so they can create an update. The student said that the companies do not like each other. I do not know if this is true or not, but I don’t understand. Isn’t Mojang shooting themselves in the foot by not providing the update to Bukkit in advance? So irritating and frustrating.

Orienteering Quest 1 Results

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Disaster!

So after hours of building up the spawning tower and protecting it with the plugin WorldGuard, the hour had come. The kids filed in and the whitelisting began.

They jumped on the server and the noise level began to rise. A good sign. There they were, all moving about with their user names floating over heads. It was cool to see.

Then the noise level rose higher and laughter ensued. Something seemed wrong. Someone had escaped. “How could this be? It was protected!” But the protection wasn’t working and the kids were mining the floor and falling through. Oh no! The room became suddenly warm and I began to perspire. All my work being destroyed.

My student assistant turned the spawn platform into a bedrock chamber and he began to teleport the students back to the chamber. But they continued to escape. A new kind of challenge, one not planned, revealed itself. Kids were fist bumping, laughing, exulting with each other when they escaped and teleported each other out of the “protected” spawn area. Some were upset that their classmates were griefing and they began trying to police each other.

I relaxed and watched it happen. It actually turned out to be pretty cool. Some fixes will be in order for next time.

Orienteering Quest 1

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Bob Kahn

Purpose: For each team of five miners to use a compass and/or coordinates to find their hidden treasure and return to the spawn point, safe and sound.

Procedure: Teams will spawn at the top of the tower shown in the photo above. They will be assigned a direction North, South, East or West to go and search for their treasure.

Continue reading →

Middle School Minecraft

Imagine the possibilities…

Author Archives: Bob Kahn