Vance and Bobbi Stevens, Domagoj and Marijana Smolčec, Dakota Redstone, Maha Abdelmoneim, and Mircea Patrascu present EVO Minecraft MOOC at SL MOOC 2017

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Learning2gether Episode 370

EVO Minecraft MOOC has completed its third iteration as an Electronic Village Online (EVO) session, and is aimed at a fourth in 2018. Community members discuss the evolution of the community, what we have learned through our experience, and implications for communities of practice forming in and around virtual worlds.

On Thursday June 22, 2017, Vance and Bobbi Stevens, Domagoj and Marijana Smolčec, Dakota Redstone, Maha Abdelmoneim, and Mircea Patrascu appeared in-world in Minecraft as part of an EVO Minecraft MOOC team to give a presentation by all accounts well received at SL MOOC 2017, hosted by Nellie Deutsch and Nan Nigrone and taking place in Second Life. (Beth O’Connell was planning to join us but was called away at the last minute to a meeting in RL).

Find this event on the schedule at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DbVPTXUkSlQ3TT6318K5sDJWa5XWTFuEO0LV7MNjERg/edit?usp=sharing

Where? The event was streamed beginning at 1400 UTC on Vance’s YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/vancestev.
And it worked, the recording is here,
https://youtu.be/Nm9qyy_VrjE

The presenters were in Minecraft and Discord, streaming voice and video from there. Of course those whitelisted on our server who wanted to make it a playdate, were able to enter the EVO Minecraft MOOC server, TP to TeacherVance, and join us there in world and live in voice in Discord.

SL MOOC participants were invited to touch base with us in Real Time in text at
http://chatwing.com/vancestev

Thanks to our testing the day before, Vance was able to get the stream going using xSplit which broadcasts to the most recent event created at my YouTube account using the credentials and stream key stored at xSplit. This seems to work quite well for Minecraft and even allows a video thumbnail from my web cam which can be easily toggled in and out.

We took our virtual guests on a railroad ride to far flung villages on the EVO Minecraft server where we saw where zombies are cured and turned into villagers who are housed in a compound created by Rose Bard and Dakota Redstone. Community members can go there to trade with the villagers. Carrots are grown on the property which can be used to exchange for things that villagers have, and Dakota grows cane there which can be harvested and turned into paper (I showed how to do this at a crafting table). Some villagers are librarians and if you can find one of those you can trade paper for emeralds and other treasures.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes

Things went well for about 45 minutes until Bobbi and I, both in Al Ain UAE, simultaneously lost our connection to Discord and could not get it back. Meanwhile I had gone walkabout and found a boat that led across a lake to lights on the other side which lit a path through a by-now dark forest to a structure someone had created at the end of the lit path. There I found ladders I was able to ascend to safety from monsters that are active on our survival mode server at night. Mircea likely teleported to my location, as he appeared there as well. By then the only audio was my microphone narrative of what I was doing, and if the conversation was still going on in Discord, it was lost to the stream and hence to SL MOOC. It was the top of the hour, so on that note, I ended the broadcast.

All the while we were streaming we were trying to acknowledge the possible presence of viewers in Second Life, but we had no way of knowing whether or not they were there (well, we did have a way but we totally missed it). Anyone who mounts one of these endeavors knows how complicated it is, whether getting the stream working while getting set up in Minecraft and organizing people in Discord (Marijana was using it for the first time and had to be guided; Bobbi as well).  Also the hosts in SL would have been equally busy mounting the stream in their virtual world and communicating with guests how to access it. Also, the event would have been early in the morning where they were (Nan overslept her alarm, she reported later). Consequently neither Nan nor Nellie replied to my emails explaining what we were doing, nor could I raise them on Skype or Facebook. So we took it on faith that they were there and played from behind the curtain as it were, not knowing what the audience was doing on the other side.

Once the event was over, and all concerned could check their emails, then the flurry of replies appeared. We had asked everyone to use Chatwing because we can organize there before the event and help anyone there reporting trouble with accessing the stream. The SL organizers had not realized that as they were handling things at their end; hence there was no message from them to us in Chatwing. For our part, we were very busy at our end and none of us were monitoring the live-stream chat. We were chatting with each other in Minecraft, and monitoring Chatwing throughout. I was monitoring stream health showing on the left of the YouTube Live window where the live chat runs on the right side, but given my limited screen real estate and the need to monitor multiple windows on my two computers, I had my Chatwing overlaying that part of the window. I was streaming in several windows on the other computer, xSplit, Discord, and Minecraft itself, so I was doing busy doing all that as well.

But for participants just joining a stream in progress, the YouTube live chat is where the action is. So we completely missed that but it’s a big lesson for next time. You definitely learn how to do this by doing it.

This was Nan’s email after the session had ended

Absolutely terrific! We’ve got the recording in the SLMOOC17 playlist on Nellie’s channel. I’m listening to what I missed. Sorry I was late. I just sent messages out to the various groups in Second Life including the MOOC participants, Open Education in Second Life, ISTE, VSTE, Real Education in Second Life, Kip Boahn’s group, and the Virtual World Education Roundtable as well as my educational groups about the location of the recording with a little positive review of the event. I also updated the Google calendar, the Google Doc schedule and the wall boards in Second Life with the link to the recording of the live stream.

You guys weren’t paying attention to the chat on YouTube live but there were a number of members of the SLMOOC, a few like Nellie who were in Minecraft too I imagine. I joined about 18 minutes in, was up late and slept through my alarm. Sorry!

Thanks so much! Such a great addition to the course! The chat in Minecraft was as informative as watching the Minecraft follow along. Thanks thanks thanks!

2017-06-23_1301evomc_slmooc

Posted at https://www.facebook.com/groups/slmooc/

And from Nellie

Thank you, Vance, Marijana and boys, and Dakota . Every live session you give on Minecraft is different and amazing!!!

And my sheepish reply 🙂

You’re right, I was pretty engrossed in multitasking across two computers, trying to drive our participants to our chatwing chat, and really sorry we missed the live stream one. Note to self for next time (in the palm of my hand, slapping it onto forehead, hope it sticks this time).

Thanks for giving us the opportunity. It was a lot of FUN as always

20170622_181822Marijana’s screenshot, and a picture of her and her younger son Domagoj presenting with us from the other side of Minecraft (used here with her permission)

20170622_152913

Announcements

This message was sent to the Google+ Communities and FB groups listed below

#Learning2gether episode 370 is hosting a live stream from the #evomc17 EVO Minecraft MOOC Minecraft server Wed June 21 for practice, and on Thu June 22, the real thing with Marijana Smolčec and Beth O’Connell, at this month’s Second Life MOOC. You are all are invited to attend either or both.

Please visit http://tinyurl.com/learning2gether for details on how to join us at Vance’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/vancestev or at http://chatwing.com/vancestev for live online help and guidance.

Also see the #SLMOOC17 program at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DbVPTXUkSlQ3TT6318K5sDJWa5XWTFuEO0LV7MNjERg/edit?usp=sharing for information on how to join this and other events there, now through end of June.

Facebook Groups

Google+ Communities

 

Wed June 21 1800 UTC Vance and Bobbi Stevens, Filip and Marijana Smolčec, Dakota Redstone, and Beth O’Connell practice live streaming from Minecraft

All were welcome to join us in our live stream practice from deep within the EVO Minecraft Server on Wed June 21 at 1800 UTC.

Where? Good question! Since this is experiment night, a good possibility is Vance’s YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/vancestev 

You should be able to see the stream there when we try to start it around 1800 UTC

It worked and the recording is here: https://youtu.be/mgYtRSSnyY0

You can also touch base with us in Real Time in text at http://chatwing.com/vancestev

Of course if you are whitelisted on our server and want to make it a playdate, you can TP to teacherVance and join us live in Discord. But it not, our aim is to stream all that, so drop by and see what we’ll be doing on Thursday

So what did we learn2gether?

I have two computers on my desk, a Windows 10 and a Windows 7. The W10 has a VPN installed on it. This is useful because it gets me around voice lag issues when streaming Hangouts on Air. Sometimes if I try to do a HoA without VPN the voice comes across like a series of horn honks and is totally unreadable. When I do the same thing over VPN things work more smoothly, though I still get frequent dropouts. Since we would be using Discord for voice as well as Minecraft I had set up to use the W10 computer for the stream. I have the latest version of Open Broadcaster Software Studio installed on my W10 computer. So I launched OBS and started setting up my scenes.

First problem, when I tried to launch Minecraft the launcher wouldn’t work. It gave this error, repeatedly:

Problem moving C:/Program Files (x86)Minecraft/tmp/tmpLauncher.tmp to MinecraftLauncher.exe with error code 5

Once I got the game going and was testing it through OBS, I got severe lag. I wondered if the VPN could be the problem so I took it out and restarted. Same thing. OBS? I stopped the encoder and tried again. Same thing. I’m trying it now while writing this next day. Same thing, all movements in slightly delayed jerks.  I wasn’t going to be able to stream Minecraft from my Windows 10.

With time counting down ever closer to start time I shifted operations to my Windows 7. I launched OBS and discovered that all I had there was the classic version. I’d used it to stream Minecraft from there before and everything had worked fine, but I’d got used to the Studio interface where you cue one scene and prepare it while broadcasting another, and trying to remember Classic was going back into time stored in disused brain cells. I consulted my personal manual where I’d documented my experiences with OBS Classic at a time I was trying to figure out how to use it.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12KL1390JLzBsopdsMLMi6ZHNC23CEzT2biNp0mCOV3M/edit?usp=sharing

Then I remembered I also had xSplit on that computer. xSplit knows my Google account credentials and YouTube Live stream key so all I have to do is set up a streaming event on Google and give it a name, and xSplit looks in my account, finds the event, and streams to it.  In the interest of time I decided to go that route.

Meanwhile people were turning up to join the show. Beth O’Connell was at school and was blocked from Discord, so she and Marijana and I had agreed to use Skype. But it turned out she wasn’t able to use Skype either.  My wife Bobbi joined us in Minecraft and on Skype so I did a test stream to see if it would work. Bobbi was able to see the stream and find its recording in her recent YouTube events, but I got a message when I stopped the stream that its archive should be ready in 24 hours. Huh? (it flashed on and of the screen, so I never worked out what that was about). Still we were able to replay the recording from the events log on Bobbi’s computer and verified that we had streamed with sound and video and all components.

By now it was almost official showtime so I set an event, Bobbi went to my channel and was notified that an event was about to happen but it was waiting for me to appear, so I decided to start streaming. Everything worked fine, and Dakota Redstone was online and invited us to join him at Glitch Gulch /warp barndoor. When we arrived there we discovered that Dakota doesn’t use Skype but he was willing to use Discord. Bobbi and I were still in Skype and we were waiting for Marijana and Filip to join us, and they were also expecting to use Skype. But by now it was  20 min after our agreed start time. We were aware that Marijana had an online event set to end just as we would start ours, and it would be understandable for that one to have gone overtime. Later I found that they also had an electrical problem. By the time she and Filip got there Bobbi and I had logged off and were sitting down to dinner, but I got their messages next day.

The purpose of the test run for me was actually to figure out how to stream it. I accomplished that, and it was left only to get everyone into Discord next day. Another minor issue was that I did not know how Nancy Zigrone and Nellie were planning to feed it into Second Life, for the SL MOOC event. So I sent them an email next morning and updated all the information at the SL MOOC program so they’d have the information there as well.

This was my message, sent several hours before the event was due to start, but apparently after Nan and Nellie were heading or had gone to their respective beds.

Is there anything more we need to do apart from start the stream on schedule? You can email us back or leave us a msg at chatwing.

Earlier this week

Sun June 11 1400 UTC Learning2gether Episode 369 – David Winet demonstrates using Screencastify to provide dynamic feedback on ESOL student writing

https://learning2gether.net/2017/06/11/david-winet-demonstrates-using-screencastify-to-provide-dynamic-feedback-on-esol-student-writing/

Mon June 12 1900 EST Developing Personal Relationships in Service-Learning

Needs and Wants: Developing Personal Relationships in Service-Learning
Global Citizenship is most effectively demonstrated through the experiences students engage in with local and global communities. The cumulation of honing such attitudes and skills explored in this series, including self-awareness, openness, sensitivity and adaptability, can be displayed in a student’s ability to function effectively when working toward shared goals with others. Looking at the dynamics of Community Service-Learning, the last session of this series will demonstrate ways students can create distinctions between their needs and wants along with others, and the impact communicating their needs has on building community relationships.

THE HOST
Lisa Petro is a Curriculum Development Consultant and the Co-founder of Know My World, a Global Education Resource organization, which focuses in the development of Social, Emotional, Academic, and Cultural Learning (SECAL) through digital cross-cultural exchanges and integrated classroom projects. Lisa has designed Global Education curriculum and professional development workshops for teachers in the United States, Japan, Nepal, China, Mexico, Albania, Palestine and Taiwan with an emphasis on social/emotional learning and cultural competence in the classroom. Lisa continues to offer cross-cultural training in preparation for panel presentations at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women with girls and women from all over the world through The Grail NGO. She has also presented dynamic cross-cultural workshos at the East Asia Regional Conference for Overseas Schools in Thailand and China, Congreso de Preparatoria, Preparatorias del Tecnólogico de Monterrey, ITESM in Mexico, the State University of New York Multicultural Education Conference, The Global Education Forum, and the SUNY Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning.
http://www.knowmyworld.org and http://www.lisapetro.com.

THE GLOBAL EDUCATOR
Genevieve Murphy is a global educator who has taught students K-12 in the United States, Japan and Taiwan. She currently designs and teaches Social and Emotional Learning at the American School Taichung in Taichung, Taiwan. Genevieve has presented professional development workshops on social, emotional and culutral projects in the United States, Japan, Nepal, China, Thailand and will be presenting at the 2017 EARCOS conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. She is also the Global Development Director and co-founder of Know My World, a global educational resource that emphasizes social, emotional and cultural learning through digital exchange and integrated classroom projects.
​http://www.ast.tc.edu.tw/

GlobalEd TV is a free, inclusive, and comprehensive webinar series which spotlights theories and best practices related to multiculturalism in schools and organizations all over the world. This 5-part series is hosted monthly by the Global Education Conference Network, the Learning Revolution, and Know My World; and the series is designed to inform educators, students, and parents about the role of cultural and global competence in education.

SIGN UP – IT’S FREE! (Registered guests are not in any way required to attend the live sessions, and will receive links to the recording after each session. Attending live will provide an opportunity to ask questions and participate actively.)

This series will look at the foundations for providing students with the kinds of social and emotional attitudes needed to be effective global citizens, and it will explain and document real classroom projects that foster cultural identity, critical thinking, assumptions, communication and social responsibility. Every session will scaffold a learning path to build the appropriate attitudes for engaging in the world and with others. The culmination will be a social impact project for the local community. Each 1-hour session will feature a project being implemented in the diverse Know My World 3rd Grade Classroom in Taichung, Taiwan by educator and co-founder, Genevieve Murphy. Co-founder Lisa Petro will host the series and lead webinar participants through the project sequence, research behind each competency area and method, and share pre-recorded footage of students engaging in the instruction. At the end of each session, participants will receive a lesson sequence to replicate or modify in their classrooms.

Visit The Global Education Conference Network at: http://www.globaleducationconference.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

 

June 1-30 Second Life MOOC

The 4th annual Second Life MOOC (SLMOOC17) was taking place in second life and virtual worlds, Moodle, and Wiziq (from the Moodle),
https://moodle4teachers.org/course/view.php?id=114

 

2 thoughts on “Vance and Bobbi Stevens, Domagoj and Marijana Smolčec, Dakota Redstone, Maha Abdelmoneim, and Mircea Patrascu present EVO Minecraft MOOC at SL MOOC 2017”

  1. Pingback: Learning2gether with the Moodle MOOT Virtual Conference Aug 4-6, 2017 | Learning2gether

  2. Pingback: TESOL 2018 Chicago: Preparing Teachers to Engage Learners with EVO Minecraft MOOC | Learning2gether

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