There are two parts to the end of term lesson. Both parts are done in Minecraft.
Part 1: Obstacle course
Long story…I sat in the Minecraftedu class that was held in Canvas. In week 3 I learned that there is practically no way I will be able to use the “edu” version because I am not attached to an institution. But I can still get ideas from teachers who do use the edu perks. Our server is not a Minecraftedu server, but I was still able to put in a lot of nifty things.
When I watched this video, a YouTube video link, , I knew I found part of what I wanted to do with this project. What impressed me the most is he is doing this with second graders. How awesome is that?!? I used some of his ideas and added a few of my own.
This next video is an example of what you’ll be doing in our lesson. I highly recommend you watch the video I made before class because I don’t plan on taking part of our 30 minutes to talk. I want you to have the time to play and explore. Overview of obstacle course. I do not have all the same nifty features that Minecraft Teachr used but there are reasons. Skip over part 2 if you want to hear about what I tried that did not work, which really was not that much. Continue on to Part 2 if you want to read about the Scavenger Hunt.
Part 2: Scavenger Hunt
Each person will be transported to a biome of his/her choice. Please sign up before class at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Bl6-RfO0h_QPgYT-qQV2JA6LJfHK0edIBQUYCfkZgRs/edit?usp=sharing so that things are less chaotic in class.
Everybody will be sent to a different location so that you are not all trying to find the same items in the same geographic location.
Part of my obsession with MC is finding objects or just seeing what happens when I use a shovel to knock something down or shears to trim a tree. I am fascinated with the variety of results that come from actions. You may have read my idea about testing hypotheses, and I think this fascination stems from the part where I was (and still am) hypothesizing what will happen if I…
There are two branches you can go with the Scavenger Hunt: organic or (inorganic and tools).
Organic is everything dealing with trees, flowers, mushrooms, plants, or live beings without killing them, like shearing wool from sheep. If you get flowers and can dye the wool, that would count as a separate item than fresh wool from the sheep. What I learned from the MCedu class, or maybe in the training videos, is that we don’t really want to encourage kids to kill animals. Likewise, we don’t use monsters in the beginning. There will not be monsters in our version, so if you are planning on being able to gather monster parts or skeltons, that won’t be an option. There may still be spider webs (organic), but no spiders.
Each different flower is an item. A purple tulip is not the same as a pink tulip. Collect at least 1 of each and put it in your chest. Lilacs and roses are separate items. Daisies and sunflowers are different items. Two sunflowers, however, are still one item. There are, however, two types of mushrooms: the brown ones and the red ones. If this does not make sense and you want more clarification, please let me know.
Inorganic and tools:
Inorganic items are all of the ores. Technically coal is organic, but for this exercise, it will be treated as an ore and will fall in the inorganic category. After all, is coal a renewable resource? Tools are included here because tools are better with inorganic items. It just made sense to have you collect ores, and make as many tools as you can from them. Even though a gold shovel may be not very useful in a game, it will count as one item and a wood shovel will be counted as a separate item. We’re ignoring wood as an organic asset at the moment, and are focusing on the inorganic or functional side of mining. Yes, you may count tools made of wood as one inorganic item. So a wooden axe is one item, a wooden shovel is one item, a wooden pickaxe is another item (so far that is 3 items). After finding cobblestone, an axe made with stone is 1 item, a stone shovel is another item (we’re up to 5 different items). If this does not make sense, just ask.
- You do not have to collect more than one of an item to represent it. You may need to chop down several trees, but in your chest for display, you only have to have one block of the item to represent it.
- So we don’t go crazy, you will have 24 hours to complete this task. I am putting a time limit on it because there may be other people who want to do a MC activity and there are a limited number of servers students can use through BSU. I may start checking chests at 6 pm Thursday, Boise time. (5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern)
- Put your items in a chest. I will not be able to see your inventory. I put a double chest at each destination. If you need a larger one, you will have to chop down a tree for the wood. If you make it larger, put it with the double chest I made.
- Make sure I know which site you transported to. If you did not sign up on the location sheet before class, be sure to put your name on the sheet before I check chests. If there is no name near a location, I will not be checking those chests.
- Please indicate if you want to be a part of the scavenger hunt contest or not. If I can create a badge or award and can figure out how to get it registered with our class, then I (or Dr. H) will be issuing badges or awards based on how diverse your organic or inorganic portfolio is.
What’s the point?
Understanding how organic and inorganic items exist can be tricky, especially since we use wood in so many items. Even though I am not including tools in the organic side, technically tools made out of wood would be organic.
Doing this type of expedition could lead to a discussion about renewable and non-renewable resources. What did students find as they mined? If they were to wait a year and let the area repopulate, what would mining in that area be like? Would the iron ore return? Would the trees regrow?
The concept of biomes is still taught in biology classes. Perhaps instead of a contest, students could compare the organic items found in specific biomes. Notch actually did a good job of trying to get biomes to match their description. I did not grab the coordinates for a savannah, but there is also a savannah biome. The tiaga looks like a tiaga, and the forests have a different name than “deciduous” forest. I like how UCMP decided biome classifications, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss5/biome/. It turns out that MC has those 5 designations, too: aquatic, deserts, forests, grasslands, and tundra. (The frozen lands are like tundra.)
Even though this differentiation (organic vs inorganic) may seem very simple and not worth the time it would take to do the scavenger hunt, there may be other ways to use this activity to teach about organic or inorganic items, or the idea of scarcity. If you have ideas on how you can adapt this lesson to meet a teaching expectation, please share it with me.
Resources I looked at and may have used
Obviously the Minecraft Teachr video, . Please note, YouTube gave me the wrong URL twice. This should be linked to part 2 of his introductory video. I have no idea why it sent me to other videos done by this person, but that is what was happening when I tried to put links in here.
How to work with water:
How to control minecarts:
I tried using switches to activate the redstone powered rails, but I could not get them to work. I ultimately decided to have the rails permanently turned on and powered to help the cart speed down the track. I wanted to have switches control the starting point because the minecarts would just spontaneously start rolling down the track. It did not matter if I was using a powered rail or a regular one- the carts liked to roll. I found this site: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/discussion/135427-how-to-start-your-cart-even-with-minecart-boosters
The restraint idea came from that website and it is the only thing I have found to stop the Minecart from spontaneously rolling down the track. This is why the track needs to be reset if more than one person wants to visit the same place. Then again, you could just run down the track, but where’s the fun with that?
How to teleport
This took a couple days of looking at things- I found ideas from building my own transporter, which I tried to do only to learn that the 9 square crafting table I was using was not designed to make certain objects (maybe because it is version 1.7.10?). I eventually came across these websites:
This one told me how to acquire command blocks: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Command_block
I had no problems acquiring the command blocks. The first time I tried to program them, they did not work so Dr. H. had to make some changes to the server. Please do not change the commands in the command blocks. I am hoping that feature is turned off when the world is open to students, but in case that gets overlooked, please don’ t mess with the locations.
Fortunately there are many helpful people who have answered questions about teleporting:
If you have any questions about how I figured out how to do something, just ask. I may have lost track of some of my bookmarked sites.
I totally agree with the article, http://www.wired.com/2014/10/video-game-literacy/, because if there is an interest, kids (even everybody) will read. I can’t verify the reading levels they quoted in the article, but I would pretty much bet the online educational guide sites are written higher than a 4th grade reading level. The irony with me, however, is that I have been avoiding the wiki sites or anything that gives away real secrets. Yes I have consulted the crafting guides, but other than being able to make a bed, I don’t really know why I want wool. When I was building in crafting mode for my epic build, which I am still working on, wool came in handy to soak up the miniature river I created in the middle of my store, but otherwise I am not quite sure what to do with it.
I am still spending hours just mining, and am hoping it will get boring so I’ll stop. If anything, I am starting to become motivated to read about things I have not figured out on my own. Because I want to approach Minecraft as a way of experiencing the scientific method, I’m “testing” myself to see if the hypotheses I have been making are accurate. This means that I do the research by experimenting, however, a part of the scientific process includes doing research on published materials to help me understand what my data may mean. I think I am coming close to having to seek out the published data and figure out what I can do with the animals that spontaneously show up other than scare the begeebers out of them or in the case of sheep, shear their wool.
The article mentions the short stories that have been created by teenagers. I downloaded a few of them anticipating we may be asked to read them during this class. So far we have not been asked to read one, but I may now that I have learned teenagers are writing these books. That is so cool! I keep telling myself to stop being lazy and write a book about something I know, not necessarily a Minecraft story, and here there are kids 1/4 to 1/3 my age already being published. Imagine having a student who you inspired to write Minecraft novellas being able to pay for college from what she earned by selling her books online. That would make me very happy.
The Epic Build is finally done. Here’s a video of it:
What is written here is somewhat of a diary of the process.
I am building a store called Purse-n-Boots as my epic build in MC. It may not be as amazing as others’ will be, but I want to take an approach that is not conventional. I’m still convinced that not enough girls are playing MC because it is a boy thing. The skills in MC really don’t require a gender.
As I build the quest, I’m taking snapshots. I want to start loading them so it won’t be a menace later once I’m really ready to post.
I am not sure where my words will land because this is a WordPress site that I haven’t figured out how to fully control, or how to put in a carriage return after the last image. So my description and narrations may go in random places.
I did a videotape of quickly putting in wooden floors. ht
I don’t know how to get text to align with the images, so please bear with me while I add commentary and more pics.
After cleaning up the water spill, I worked on the walls. Here are some shots of putting up walls and putting blocks that glow in the letters of the name of the store.
I created a video to show a fast way to put in floors. Essentially it involves chopping up the line of blocks you want to replace, and then hit the S (backwards) button and your drop button quickly one right after the other and the row will fill easily. It works best if you have blocks on either side of you while you do this so that you don’t go off course.
This was a fun quest which was actually quite enjoyable to do. I’m tempted to redo the virus particle because there are a few flaws, but I don’t know if I have to be a perfectionist with this activity. I did the sketch in Minedraft:
So just a few things I learned with Minedraft- be sure where you start your image is where you want it to be. You can’t scroll so if your image happens to go off the screen, then it goes off the screen. On my computer the difference between zoom and out was one choice either way and the zooming out was really small.
So what we have here in the drawing are proteins that make up the capsid, proteins that give the nucleic acid a place to sit, and nucleic acid in the center. The stuff on the edges are receptor molecules which viruses often have so they can be recognized by their host cell.
Moving into Minecraft I learned that I can’t put grass on the edge of water. Well, I could not find a block for water so I first tried the translucent blue glass, and ultimately went with blue wool, I think. So the materials list I gathered from Minedraft proved to be useless.
The cactus would not stick. I could not find wheat or the reeds. At least Minedraft gave me a sketch with colors and features I wanted to put in my build in Minecraft. It was very useful and was on my screen as I was building because I wanted to align the squares like they were in the drawing.
Now Minecraft images:
Yes, I know there are some flaws, but this is not too bad for going from a 2 dimensional drawing to a 3 dimensional object. For me, this is amazing. Spatial thinking is not my specialty so I’m actually very excited with how this turned out. Enjoy!
If you can’t get the 3d idea from these images, just let me know and I’ll take a few more. Thank you for taking time to check out my 3D construct.
I don’t think this actually matches with any quest in our class, but I wanted to put this up in case anybody wants to read about my dysfunction. Two summers ago I played Minecraft for the first time. I did not realize until recently that it was in survival mode, not creative mode. So if you read this thread when it was titled creative mode, my first set of images are wrong.
I did not get engaged with it because it was just a flat piece of land, no trees, no water, and not even any deeper than 3 blocks. I have no clue why my world was created this way. I did the quest through 3dGameLab in summer 2012 and here are pictures of the landscape I was allowed to play with. The “town” has people who give me glances and grumble.
The images are dark because it was night and I have too many other things to do than wait for daylight. I tried to set it to daylight, but was told I did not have that permission. This reinforces me thinking that I was in a setting that was not like normal Minecraft. I’ve been able to do commands in other worlds.
I also apologize for the untrimmed images. I changed the forward key from W to alt because hitting the alt key is much more comfortable. Well, alt-printscreen has me slamming forward in every pic I take that way. Plus, I think all you can see in the background is MC stuff.
Some screenshots of the land I don’t use:
3 layers of land
Update of images- these were taken in daylight.
Shots of the village:
So that was my first experience with Minecraft. Can you blame me for not wanting to do any more with it. Here I am 2 years later and am having a completely different experience. I wish I had had the experience I’m having now 2 years ago. I would be so much further along with my learning. I hope my “instructor” from summer camp does see this post because s/he needs to change the way that course was designed. If I find something that I can hook on to explore or have fun doing, I will. For the most part, the adventures I can have lately involve the computer so learning how to play a game is something I’d gladly do, unless it makes me motion sick.
That leads into my next revelation: at the moment, creative mode is too challenging for me to do it comfortably. I want to barf when I do creative mode. I have not figured out how to handle the perspective when dropping blocks and the motion makes me queasy. I was all happy because I was expecting all of the virtual worlds to make me motion sick because in the past they have. I’ve been addicted to the peaceful version of survival mode for nearly 2 weeks now and have not felt ill at all. I was doubting my previous inclinations to just wanting to go to sleep instead of continuing with the required chore of the game. I was actually having fun exploring and posing hypotheses to see if I can predict when something is going to show up and when. I attended a second life informal session and did not feel nauseous. What a joy! I may be able to participate in Second Life after all, without getting too cranky. Optimism abounds.
Then I work on my “creative” project and my vision gets really ticked off. That must have been what I tried to do in the past because I get nauseous now when I attempt to build in that mode. It is a combination of vertigo, dizziness, queasiness, and just plain disgust. I have at least one more required quest that involves creating or building my own image so we’ll see how things go.
Oct 9, 2014, update to creative mode projects
I am getting better at controlling creative mode. I have to be careful because I am still having spatial challenges, but the visual / vertigo side effects don’t seem to be very prevalent. I hope I can continue to not get motion sick at every opportunity. Fingers crossed!
There are two videos of my first night with monsters!
The first video is just to show how I set up the space. It is evidence I set it up to have monsters, even though I did not have any the first night. No monsters, but I spawned in the ocean! What?!?
The second video was almost an hour long. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to shorten it to 5 minutes. I did have a 3 minute version, but you really could not tell that not only did I have one monster during the second day, but I had TWO! I blew up my first monsters and got it recorded on tape. I’m so proud of myself :-).
Other things I want to point out:
The first island I swam to after practically drowning had nothing other than sandstone and sugar cane. Even though I ground up some sugar, I could not figure out how to eat the plain sugar. I think the second island I swam to did not have any trees so I kept on swimming. I know I need trees.
So the third island had trees, but in the day I was there, I could not find any coal. So I figured out how to make charcoal from wood to then make torches.
A couple things that may not be obvious- I did manage to practically drown a pig. I swiped one with an apple or sugar that I was trying to give to it. I was able to kill one pig, but was not able to kill the cow. I ate pork to sustain my life strength things.
At 3:25:01 you can see the remnants of a monster blowing up. If you pause the video and go back to 3:24:26, you can see a little green critter that blends in well with the ground. I’m sorry the sound effects did not transfer with the video when I shortened it. Monster #2 shows up at 3:28:16. He is another little green thing that I blow up with my pickaxe. Woohoo! Monster guts at 3:28:25. How’s that for a Noobie?
At 3:39:26 I’m trying to offer sugar to the pig. I obviously need to read up on what can be fed to the animals. I was feeling bad because I killed its comrade and don’t know if this is the one I practically tossed in the water or not. I was just trying to make friends with the random wild pigs. Yeah, you can see at 3:41:20 I ended out knocking down the pig to a lower level. Oops. I guess what I did was not the way to give sugar to a pig.
At the end, I went through my little island collecting as much stuff that seemed reasonable to carry, reclaimed my crafting table and furnace, and called it quits for the night. I anticipate swimming to a different island when I log back in to see what happened while I was “gone”.
Survival overnight with Monsters the next day- Sorry, this does not actually work. I’m trying to process it again. Temporary FAIL.
Mischief remodeled. I did a video of the video. It is now a 5 min video and lives at screencast so it should play properly.
I also want to thank Dr. Snelson who in her YouTube for Educators class has us learn multiple ways to work with videos. With the knowledge I learned in her class and help tutorials at Adobe, I was able to shorten the nearly one hour video to five minutes. It involved using Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Multimedia Encoder, and ultimately Screencast Desktop Uploader because Dreamweaver could not handle it. The video itself was created using Camtasia, but I don’t think Camtasia can shorten video length yet. It is nearly a 1 Gb file. If I go over my Screencast quota, I’ll have to find a new location.
Update to video process information. The 1 Gb file up at Screencast did not work. It needed a video player embedded with it, which I could not figure out. But the 5 min wmv video did work on my computer so I recorded the 5 min video in Camtasia. That 5 min video uploaded easily to Screencast and that is what you will see if you click on the link to the shortened video. What a long trip this has been…
One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that my creativity gets sparked when someone inspires me. I did not feel very inspired with this quest. Personally I would have liked to have collaboration and feedback so someone can help me see my flaws or can give suggestions to improve things. I don’t mean I want to plagiarize someone else’s ideas, but it is really nice when they can compliment mine.
May I whine for a moment? My screenshots used to land in my dropbox, but apparently they didn’t this time so I will have to probably record the scenery. The only problem at the moment is that it is raining and the rain won’t stop. So I’m going to make some dinner and hope that later tonight I can make a video to show the shoes and purse that I made.
I tried to make a house, but it was turning out to be very lame. I just wasn’t feeling any creative juices so I decided to try another angle. Pete (my husband) listens to me talk about my school adventures. I mentioned that there is a chance I may be able to create a 1 week summer class about Minecraft and I’d like to do it in a way to grab girls’ attention. As I go through watching videos or “researching” Minecraft things, even those being used in the classroom, almost everybody who is engaged with it are boys. My class (EDTECH 531) is very different because I think EDTECH women may just naturally be a little different than the typical girl. Not seeing girls playing with tech things bothers me, especially since part of my umph with teaching was to show girls that they can do science and they can enjoy it. I am not saying I am solely responsible for any student choosing to follow a career in science, but I certainly tried to support and encourage all students to be successful in science. Because I am female, it was only natural that girls would be comfortable seeing me having fun, and therefore they would think they could do it, too. Coaching the girls’ tennis team for 2 years (before I lost the ability to hold a tennis racquet) also helped with being able to connect with girls in general. I think for some of the girls on my team, when they were in my classes, they were certainly comfortable asking questions or sharing ideas. But I digress….
Well, sort-of digress. With the creative quest, like I said I was not feeling very inspired. So I mentioned to Pete how there seemed to be a dirth of girls playing Minecraft. What could we do to make it more enticing to girls? If I’m any indication, fighting Monsters just does not excite me. I love the flowers that I can find and how they are used as dyes. What can I do within the confines of the Minecraft structure to make it more interesting to girls?
Well, in creative mode, I decided to use images in a Glamour magazine to inspire me to make shoes and a purse. The shoes are actually boots. The purse has a strap. The image I used had texture so I used the sandstone. Further down you’ll see pics of my inspirations and videos of my objects.
I did not feel inspired enough to make the motorcycle style jacket, but who says a 12 year old girl can’t do it? Minecraft inspired clothing or accessories, literally designed in Minecraft. I don’t mean making t-shirts with monsters on them, but maybe tshirts with patterns that are made in Minecraft or show the flowers? From experience I know that Vistaprint can take any image made to their specifications (dimensions) and can turn it into a t-shirt. I did it for my students for a couple years.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have girls be entrepreneurs and pay for their college degrees because of things they created using Minecraft. Like that girl who figured out how to make MySpace layouts and she became very wealthy selling her shells. I realize there is the “free” culture in Minecraft so I don’t want students to necessarily make skins and sell them because that may be counter-culture, but who am I to stop them from executing their ideas? OK, time to make dinner…
I can’t find my snapshots that are taken in Minecraft any more. They don’t seem to be automatically going to Dropbox like they used to do. I made a video so you can see the purse and shoes. Then the rain stopped. I took a couple snapshots using F2, but don’t know where they are. And then the sun set so I could not easily make another video.
When a better video is made, I’ll put it here.
The better video: The purse and shoes in daylight without rain.
The inspiration for the boots and purse:
So after about three and a half hours of working in Minecraft, I have amassed a huge hole in the ground with lots of layers. I’m in search of coal because I have no way of having fire or anything that requires energy. So far I’ve chopped down trees, made pick axes, and mined a heck of a lot of Cobblestone. I don’t really want to make a house because I like my under ground dwelling. I like the stone walls. I put in a skylight by digging into the cave a little bit and then by digging up to make a break in the ground. Of course I was not planning anything so my skylight is actually under a tree, but if that is a problem, I can always chop down the tree. For the moment, I think having a tree cover the hole in my roof is a good idea.
From what I understand, I can go down to find coal. I was sort-of doing that, while making a gradation so that I can climb out, but have not reached coal, lava, or anything more interesting than rock that turns into cobblestone yet. I almost killed the game because I managed to get myself down in the hole or a corridor pretty far and lost my light. I was not sure if I went too far so I’d not even see sunlight when the sun came up, and fortunately a few stray rays did make it down to where I was. With quite a bit of jumping and walking, I finally got out. Fortunately this means I don’t have to start from scratch if I want to keep this as my “home”.
After making this video, I went searching for coal. I found some! I now have coal, sand, a few pickaxes, a real axe, a hoe, some flowers, a couple furnaces, eggs, and various woods.
Update Sept 16 2014
I consulted with my local 12 year old expert yesterday because I could not figure out how to find iron. Now I am very confused. The pictures in this quest look like survival mode and I chose survival mode, by accident so I did not think anything was wrong. Colby, my adviser, told me that I would not be having inventory problems if I was in creative mode. So…looking back at quest directions, I have no clue if I should be in survival mode or creative mode. I’m going to keep this realm because I am really proud of what I found and created. Even though I did not create any elaborate houses, I found coal and was able to make some torches. I figured out how to pick flowers. Almost literally, with a pick-axe. Even though I have not found iron yet, I think that I’ve put in enough time for this particular quest. My inventory is packed and I really don’t want to start putting chests in my realm because I’ve lost track of how to find things I’ve put in various places. I have three crafting tables in different locations and built 3 furnaces. I put a furnace in my underground “home” but I don’t know if I’d find that dwelling again because I did a really good job of putting it in a somewhat hidden place, on accident. Colby let me know that because I chose “peaceful”, I would not have been attacked by monsters anyway.
I just popped in to my realm and as usual, it is dark. Colby showed me a way to “program” the game with one line of code, but I did not catch how to pull up the box that lets me put in code. That’s OK because I’m going to “give up” for now on this realm. Two things that I may have done “wrong” are starting this in survival mode, which I truly did not intend to do; I thought I was in creative mode, and using 1.7.10. Apparently using 1.8 for this would have made more sense. In the future, I will probably use 1.8 unless the quest tells me not to. As usual, the logistics of things like the directions of the assignment are what are causing me to have trouble. It isn’t that I can’t figure out what to do, it’s that what I think I’m supposed to be doing may be way more tough than it should be because I did not understand the directions, which may have been lacking details that I needed.
Here you can see my skin changed, flowers in my inventory, the pickaxes I created, along with crafting tables, furnaces, axes and hoes. I think I’m especially proud of the eggs I collected and the fact that I did not break too many of them, if any at all. I’m curious if after a few days in inventor if they will turn into rotten eggs and start to stink up the place.
What to do? I found IRON!!!!
I still am leading a very nomadic life. I’ve tossed a bunch of cobblestone in a pond to create a flat surface for me to rest upon. The sun has set so I’m going to take a break. I need to eat breakfast anyway (and take a shower). I think I’m going to put a crafting table and a forge here so I can make some really good tools. I figured out what to do with my flowers- I stuck them in the ground to mark where I had been mining. Go figure- did I just have an idea that came from ME?!? Of course I figured this out AFTER I had thrown away some of my precious flowers. I saved the seeds, though, because I have no clue what they will grow and I’m curious.
At this point I’ve already admitted defeat in the quest and turned it in, so I don’t think I’ll get any additional XP for continuing on this time consuming adventure. Does that matter? What is my motivation at this point? To find more iron! I know it is out there- but where is it hidden? Obsess, much, Melissa?
So I started hanging out on my patio next to the pond and it starts to rain. Worried the pond may flood, I put up some cobblestone barriers at the edge of the pond. Now if it starts to flood, I may be creating a cesspool in my patio, preventing the water from draining into the pond. I also have some dirt adjacent to the cobblestone in my patio, so maybe the water will be able to seep into the ground. Would that mean, though, if I started digging into the dirt I’d come up with an underground water source? hmm….I have not found one yet.
I guess I’ve gone in a wonderful circle. I made it back to the first hole that I dug out while looking for coal and I just went back in to look for iron. I made a short video clip so you can see how I broke through the ground.
I made a patio along a body of water and set up a crafting table, a furnace, and a chest to store stuff there. Of course I forgot to photograph it— if I wander back that way, I’ll take a snapshot so you can see what the cove looks like.
UPDATE Sept 18, 2014
I’m now going to compile several of the videos and screenshots that I’ve taken over the past week. At the moment, I am stuck in an underground cave, which could be worse if there were monsters who know I’m there. At the moment, I think I am still free of monsters, but I keep hearing ominous sounds. Like with most things I don’t understand, I ignore it. I figure I’ve spent about 20 hours searching for stuff and have been rather successful. I met all the requirements for the quest so I figured I should put together all the documentation I took at various points during the game. Since I can’t effectively use SnagIt during the game, I’ve relied on the F2 button and taking short videos in Camtasia. I have no clue where the F2 snapshots are being stored so we may not actually be able to enjoy any of them.
Video 1: 9 minutes of me wandering around, collecting wood, being lost in the dark, and not having much of anything other than a hole in the ground. This was pre-coal. It was also before I realized the computer’s internal sounds were not being recorded. I do not recommend you wasting your time on this silent film. It is here to give you an idea of the growth I’ve gone through in the last week. I think the last 5 minutes are a black screen b/c I was “lost” in my “home”.
Video2: 4+ minutes of my first “home”, this time with sound. You can see I made a crafting table so that I could make some pickaxes. They are still wooden tools at this point because I don’t have coal or iron yet. As a FYI, after making several “homes” in various places, I tried to get back to this one so that I could use torches and go exploring again. Unfortunately I could not find my way back to this exact spot. Although shorter, this video has lots of black time because I was literally in the dark.
Video3: about 30 seconds of hearing water running. It is in the dark, but I’m next to the water. I’m not sure why I videotaped this unless it was because I was happy to have found a waterfall.
Video4: another 30 sec video. Obviously for this video, I had coal! There is a torch in here. I’m not sure if the sound is water rushing outside or if it is rain. Geez, it rains all of the time in my realm. I love it, but it makes for dark skies.
Video5: 45 sec video. One thing that is new in this one is the furnace. This means that I had coal and cobblestone. I don’t remember if I did any smelting at this point because I think I’m still without iron.
Video6: about 1 minute. One thing that is very perceptible in this video are the squeaks. I just figured I’m living with mice. In another location, I learned that the squeaks are bats. Looking back at this video, it should have been obvious here that the squeaking was coming from the bat that was flying around me. I’m slow on the uptake so I really don’t think I connected squeaks to bats quite yet. Actually in later holes, I hear squeaks and still think “mice”. Very slow on the uptake.
Things to notice in this video:
There is coal in the wall, as well as iron (Yippee!). I don’t think I quite realized it until maybe even an hour later, but the red things with white dots are mushrooms. The brown flat things are not strange trees; they are a different variety of mushrooms. I encounter a grove of them in a few hours so I’ll hold off on that description until we get to that video. You’ll see 2 mushrooms in my tray, but I don’t know if I connected the red and white dot “trees” to the mushrooms in my inventory quite yet. In time I had to toss out the shrooms- they are in one of the crates I have somewhere on the land.
Video7: About 6 and a half minutes complete with snorting piggies and chopping up dark wood trees. I’m using a stone pick-axe here which may actually be what I was using earlier. Unfortunately my video parameters were not set properly for this capture so it is hard to see the bottom inventory tray.
You may notice that I have a crafting table and a chest in this location. Instead of going back to previous spots that I could no longer find, I just started making new “homes” and put crafting tables, cabinets, and/or furnaces when I needed to empty the inventory or build new tools. Of course I was hoping to be able to retrieve the inventory later, but I keep losing track of where I’ve been.
OK, I picked up an apple here. Where did that come from? I tried many times after this point to chop down various tree looking like things to see if I could get another apple. I think it was when I was on the quest for apples that I finally realized the mushrooms are mushrooms. <grin>
I did not know the short brown/beige things were mushrooms yet, though. I was still thinking huge enormous tree looking like things were mushrooms. I did enjoy the variety of plant life, too. I don’t recall if there is a video of me capturing flowers, but at one point I had several of them.
I chop down a birch tree in this video. Later on I started taking one cube out of a birch tree as I passed them so that I could mark that I’ve been there. I like the birch tree wood.
Starting at around 5:30, I do an inventory check. I did these on video because it was the only way I could get the viewer (you) to see all of the items I’ve collected or created, along with their label.
This video may be messed up a little bit b/c I downloaded MC so I could play it while the video rendered. Sorry if I trashed it by accident. I may not be able to continue to do this, though, because my machine is now running at 71 deg.
video8: 3 minutes of downpour on the beach. I marvel at how clear the water is. The cobblestone in my hand may be there because I plan to use it to create a bridge. I learned that I can get across water by tossing down cobblestones. Later when I get into spots in the mines where there are really long drops, I use cobblestone to make bridges to get me to gold or other goodies safely. I also use it to block off lava and channel it. That may be in another video. This one is mostly beach scenes, rain, and inventory.
video9: 2 min. I found acacia trees. The have redish/orange insides.
video10: about 4 min. I guess since I spent so much time in the dark, I figured I might as well use the time to make videos of what I’ve done and am experiencing. This is near fungus land where there is a grey covering all over everything. At first I was afraid to walk on it because there were little bubbles coming off of it. I met some sheep here. I also went down in a hole. I don’t know what I pushed, but somehow I lost all of my inventory and other clues. I eventually got it back, but it was odd going through the mine a bit blind.
video11: now I’m getting into videos that focus on something I wanted to make sure I captured. This one is on smeltering iron ingots
video12: about 4 and a half minutes of me trying to figure out how to make the armor. I did not edit out the trips to 3dGameLab to find the list of items I should make, feel free to fast forward.
video 13: about a minute of inventory and putting things in a chest I have lost among the land.
video 14: about three and a half minutes of exploring.
video 15: 6 minutes of exploring in the cave near where I found lava!!! And as expected, where there is heat, we have compounds melting and cooling at different rates, therefore more metal streaks (gold!), and some minerals (lapis).
video16: 3 minutes of a thunder storm while I am trapped underground. What is up with the screeching? I’m assuming it is a monster. I get grumblings and screeches at times. I usually ignore them, but anticipate having my head ripped off at some point.
video 17: 7 minutes of my inventory and wandering near a lava pit. I made this last video to document where things were when I chose to stop working on this for real. Even sitting here writing my learning log, I am having to force myself from not opening up the software just to go exploring. Can I find obsidian this time? Will I be able to mine it? Those diamonds I saw near the lava patch over there, I wonder if they are still available or if they got covered in lava when I managed to destroy a barrier. This last video is just a short trip around a lava pit. You can see the cobblestone walls I put up in case I do something stupid like cause a lava flow (again).
Screenshots from various stages:
Can this continue?
I also took screenshots that loaded into Clipmate. I then put them into a document.
That document is nearly 2 Mb so it is having difficulty uploading to my website. I don’t think there is anything from the Clipmate images that is not already covered with the Dropbox images (which are here). You can see both of my death screens, so I think that may be all you need to know :-).
I need a break for a moment, but I do plan to put in a reflection. I have spent nearly all of my “spare” time the past week creating this realm and playing in it. I think I died 3 times- not sure why I only have 2 death screens, though. I have had lots of reflections going through my mind this past week. After I get caught up on my sleep, I intend to come back to add them here.
Looking back at the time stamp on the first snapshots, I can’t believe I’ve only been doing this for a week. I am fully addicted to playing Minecraft in my realm. I am not addicted yet to playing it with others or playing it in a way that there is a real purpose like the Acropolis that I still have to build. When I reread my first impressions I am almost embarrassed because I was such a doggone wimp! I need to keep it there as a reminder of reality and what some of my students may go through. I was a bit frustrated at the lack of structure in the course, but I’m getting used to it isn’t bugging me as much as it was (I hope). This place, however, is not where I need to go into that topic. Here I get to talk about all of the really cool things I went through in this experience.
In fact, if I do this with my students at all, it will probably be as a lesson on perseverance. Short story made long: Last summer I took a class on South Dakota Indians to meet that requirement for their teaching credential. Our final project was to take Joseph M Marshall III’s book, The Lakota Way, and make a lesson out of each chapter. I spent much of the summer enjoying learning about South Dakota history and especially enjoy anything Mr. Marshall writes. Perseverance is one of his chapters. While doing the Minecraft adventure, I realized what I needed was more perseverance in the beginning. Learning how to persevere is an important personality development because it lets you have strength. Doing science does not always make sense. As much as many teachers try to break things down into tiny pieces so students can be successful in increments and therefore not become overwhelmed, doing real science requires respawing after going for a swim in the lava. Too many students give up too soon. Hey look at me!!! That is what I did! I admitted defeat after only a few hours of playing. Even though I had done the requisite quests and even had my own note taking system going for me, I was still too unaware of what the bleep I was supposed to be doing.
I could possibly bring in a chemistry connection, but I can’t tell if chemistry rules are being followed in the game. I was glad to see that my gold pickaxe was wimpy, even though I’m not thrilled I wasted 3 gold ingots on it. I don’t know why they bother having us make a gold pickaxe in the first place. Gold should be wimpy, it is actually a very soft metal. I was glad to see that was being observed.
Having partial physics in the game allows for the element of surprise, like when you knock out the block that turns into gravel and the next one just slides on down. I’m really glad I was not knocking out one of those blocks directly over my head.
A few things I still don’t know:
Why are the mushrooms so freaking large? Do these programmers have an obsession with shrooming?
Why the fungus hills give off bubbles.
Why the groundrock- or whatever that black and grey rock is called- gives off bubbles. Are those bubbles toxic? Should I be trying to capture them somehow?
How many times can I regenerate?
How many ways can I die?
Am I actually supposed to eat? If so, how do I do that?
Is there an advantage to using one type of wood over another?
Will I be able to control my urges to play the game?
How to swim.
What are those cows that look like they have mushrooms on their heads?
I could not fly in my game, nor did I want to. I completely forgot that I can fly in some worlds.
If you have not played the game in this way yet, don’t read my observations. If what you saw in my snapshots and videos does not already spoil things for you, my following comments may.
You won’t see an item until you have accomplished what comes before it. I did not see iron before I saw coal. Even when respawning, I had to go through the phases. Chop up a tree with my hands, get a chunk of wood, make planks, make sticks. Use a stick to chop up wood to get more wood to make a wooden axe. Once I had a wooden axe, if I went looking in the right places, I could find some coal. I don’t know how much wood I had to chop before I could see coal.
Once with coal, make torches so you can go exploring in dark caves. You need to go in the cave to find the iron. Once you have iron blocks, use your furnace, which was easy to make because you’ve chopped through so much cobblestone that you could open up a cobblestone factory. Smelt the ore to make ingots. While I used to keep some unplanked wood around just in case it seemed like I’d need it, I have found zero need for iron ore. Go ahead and put all of it into ingot form. Don’t worry about using the coal because it will become easier and easier to find.
Then go exploring. Chop up this, dig through that. I got caught in dark holes without access to torches so I know there is a way to get out of what seems like total emptiness. Let your eyes adjust and try jumping to see where “up” is located. Once you know which way is up, keep chopping until you get to the top. You may have to make steps to get out of a hole if you fell really deep. That happened a few times. I’d be chopping and accidentally chopped the block I was standing on. Woof, I’d fall with a thump in a totally dark pit with only the one square’s worth of light getting through. That happened after one of my regenerations- I was trying to be so cautious and make sure I could find my crafting table and furnace if I died and regenerated back to this spot again. I picked flowers and made a line around my objects. There was an obvious pit, though, and while trying to scope it out so I could barricade with with cobblestone, I chopped up the wrong block of dirt. I did not have coal yet so I had no torches and was who knows how far down a hole. That took a few hours to get out of.
If you see lapis or redstone, you are getting near lava. You have to be near lava to get the “good” gems. That makes sense because that is how the real earth works. Compounds cool at various temperatures so things will crystalize at various distances from lava. Lava has no mercy. You don’t want to jump in it unless you’ve figured out how to swim.
You cannot walk on water. You can try to toss down cobblestones to make a path, but you are not always allowed to toss down a block. You may have to live with the fact that you won’t get to go exploring on that tiny island that is so close you can almost smell it.
I only saw obsidian once, and it was right before I went swimming in lava. Unfortunately I could not remember how to get back to that exact location so I have not found it again. I have also not found it since that time.
Make multiple furnaces, crafting tables, and chests. You never know when you’ll just want to whip one out so you can refresh your pickaxe or torch supply. It is just easier to make them when you have the supplies and they only take 3 inventory spaces. It took me a while to see the value in chests. I learned about them when I came across them in an old mine. I found things in chests “others” had left behind. I could do that throughout the realm to be nice to others (if there were any) or to help me after a respawn. When you die, you lose everything. It is very true, “You can’t take it with you.” So if wandering around I come across a chest with “leftover” wooden pickaxes, it may not be a bad thing. After some time, I started to use chests to store extra eggs, flowers, or other items I don’t know how to use yet.
Don’t worry about cleaning up after yourself. (Yes this is a game made for me!) Leave out the crafting table, furnace, and the chest if you used one. You’ll be glad they are there if you run into them at a later time. You are not limited to making only one of those items. I was cleaning up my torches for a while so I could reuse them. Then I realized that by leaving the torches, it was a way of letting me know I’ve already been here. Plus it was a torch I did not need to make for that future time (where I was now using them).
Keep digging for coal even if you have enough because some life force thing flies out of them. I was under the impression the green lights were good.
I will add more as I think of it- I keep writing these memos in my head hoping I’ll remember to put them down in electrons.