Learning2gether Episode 399

This Building Challenge took place on the EVO Minecraft MOOC 1.12.2 server on Sunday, January 27, 2019, at 1400 UTC. It was hosted by Rose Bard, Dakota Redstone, and Jane Chien, with Don Carroll aka Abu Fletcher taking charge as natural master of ceremonies. The event was recorded by Vance Stevens as Learning2gether.net episode 399 (erroneously announced in the recording as being episode 499 — we’ll get there; wait for it). EVO Minecraft MOOC resides at https//missions4evomc. pbworks.com

Here is a document entitled Building Challenge for Language Learners professionally prepared by Rose, Dakota, and Jane:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wHg1UlMD5RIwjyXmhwcdcXsagxe3qeYAdojO6ULFodc/edit?usp=sharing

Teacher Vance made this recording

The event was announced here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JaneChienTaipei/posts/NA1ivcTgt7Z

This says that +Rose Bard, +Dakotah Redstone, and Jane Chien are hosting a building challenge. This is an activity designed for beginning English language learners. Please join us for a test run and we welcome your input afterwards.

Place: EVOMC19 Server, we’ll meet at /warp 14k

Here’s how to join our events

1. Purchase your login to Minecraft from Mojang http://minecraft.net
   With your login credentials, all logins plus software downloads including server software and client software for multiple devices are free;
   you pay around $30 for your unique login credential
2. Register with EVO Minecraft MOOC by filling in the Google form, https://tinyurl.com/evomc19-register
   Here you tell us your Minecraft user name so we can whitelist you on our server
3. Once we’ve whitelisted you, you can create a profile in Minecraft for build 1.12.2 and drop by our EVOMC19 server at this address mc.evomc.net
   For detailed instructions, see
   http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/130258518/2019_Server_Info
4. Once you’re in Minecraft we can text chat
   If you want to speak to us in voice, activate Discord by following these instructions
   http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/130343778/2019_Discord
5. Use the Minecraft text chat window to warp to 14k. At the beginning of the line type, starting with the slash /
   /warp 14k

Vance didn’t stream the event. I was distracted getting Discord to work.

However, Jane researched the discourse between Mattie and Emanuel and produced this article:
Chien, Y. (2019). The language of massively multiplayer online gamers: A study of vocabulary in Minecraft gameplay.TESL-EJ, 23(3), 1-16. http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej91/int.pdf. Also available: http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume22/ej91/ej91int/

In it she reports that the level of vocabulary used by the young learners when playing Minecraft used vocabulary that appeared on General Word Lists well advanced from words they woud be expected to know at their respective grade levels.

 

Earlier events

 

Mon Jan 21 1400 UTC Learning2gether with EVO MInecraft MOOC

https://learning2gether.net/2019/01/21/learning2gether-with-evo-minecraft-mooc-wilderness-adventure-trek-to-black_kittens-village/

This posting includes the Sat Jan 19 1300 UTC

1.13.2 server extreme survival adventure
http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/130258521/2019_Live_Events#SatJan191300UTC1132serverextremesurvivaladventure

 

Tue Jan 22 1330-1500 UTC Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear hold a Guided Practice Sandbox on the EVO Minecraft MOOC 1.12.2 server

Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear plan to hold a Guided practice on the EVO Minecraft MOOC 1.12.2 server today Jan 22 from around 13:30 (we hope to get back home in time for it) until 15:00 max (bedtime)

This is for anyone with questions or who wants some guided practice or who just feels like playing and happens to be there. We’ll be in Minecraft 1.12.2 and in Discord.

What did we do?

EVO moderators met in Discord and talked about how to help participants who were weak in English. In the background we worked on our projects individually. Teacher Vance traveled to the 20k area and found a desert temple there. I hope to return there with an expedition to excavate it.

 

Wed Jan 23 1300-1500 UTC EVO Minecraft MOOC helps Michiyo build a home

No event was declared for today, but Teacher Vance went into Discord at around 1300 UTC to see who was there. Rose was there working on a project she was planning with Jane. I went to the server and found Michiyo there. I tracked her down wandering around the boat buildings near the Birch House. I asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to build a house, so we wandered up the hill opposite the causeway leading out to the floating structures. I found a flat area, a clearing in the woods, and as the sun was getting low on the horizon, I suggested we build there.

We set to it. There was not a lot of conversation because Michiyo wasn’t in Discord and there was little time for text. I decided to model the process. I laid down dirt walls and when it got dark I planted some torches. When I ran out of dirt I added cobblestone for the ceiling. Michiyo followed my actions and helped building.

Soon Dak arrived, followed by Jane. By then I had pulled some glass from my inventory and made windows, and donated my bed (I can always make another). Dak added a door and attractive flooring. When Jane arrived I left them to complete the job because I had a real life dinner cooking in another room. When I returned next day, I found the place appearing much as I had last seen it.

There have been discussions among moderators as to the “correct” approach to getting newcomers into the game. Ideally it would be good to have workshops IF we could get people to attend them. Workshops can lead people efficiently into building, but self-guided tutorials are helpful for just-in-time learning. My approach is to just “be” on the server when I can and help people when they have a question. So when Michiyo said she wanted to learn to build, I was there to model it for her. Now that she knows what she wants to do, and as she often drops by the server, we learn more about how we can guide her, but in the MOOC way, in response to learning what SHE wants to know.

Both approaches have their merits. It’s good if a group of moderators can work on both approaches in aggregate.

There has also been much discussion about how we can help participants who are weak in English improve their language skills, or at least achieve a point of flow where they feel comfortable to where they want to learn enough language of their own accord to interact with us in English, and we have in fact written a lot ourselves on the language benefits we believe accrue from playing Minecraft, but that is for another post, perhaps for discussion of some sort as suggested by Don in this post on the Google+ Community.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105443014753998852123/posts/eYewthnrM4e

But meanwhile, here is Michiyo’s house:

Sat Jan 26 0400-0600 UTC Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear host Sandbox Adventure on EVO Minecraft 1.12.2 server

 

We have created a Doodle Poll for Saturday Jan 26 for the times in the morning we can be available.

You can find the poll here, hopefully times given in your time zone (starting at 2 am UTC, 8 pm in Chicago): https://doodle.com/poll/ae98udezap5ce5ib.

 

If you’d like to join us, indicate your availability in the poll,

we’ll see it, and we’ll schedule a time we will definitely be in Minecraft when we know that others can be there.

We can either meet with no plan, or if you would like an adventure, we can explore the jungle mansion near the spawn point

Or go looking for desert temples. Teacher Vance knows where two are, at least one of which (the one pictured above) is likely unexplored (hence not yet looted).

Pictures from the Sandbox Adventure Sat Jan 26

In the end, EVOMC19 participants were online only briefly, so Dak and I chatted in Discord while Teacher Vance roamed around the server, making discoveries which would help me lead adventures later and creating paths.

In search of the Woodland Mansion I happened on mountains where alpacas live. There were several herds of brown and white ones.

I found a tower just west of my homestead

Southwest of that I came across a village. The alpacas were in the mountains in between.

 I created a path from the village heading back toward the tower but I didn’t complete it because Dakota appeared and helped me find the mansion

I spent my last two hours in world setting a torch trail from the mansion back to Dak’s mushroom tower. The last part nearest the tower was over treetops (no torches)

Dak helped me find my way through the tunnel and into the pools to the north that exited again to the north on views overlooking my house and his builds

My way was torch-lit already up the mountain to my Scraggly Tower and down to my mountain eyrie, where I found a bed and a good night’s rest

 

 

 

 

 

Learning2gether Episode 398

The 2019 rendition of EVO Minecraft MOOC, http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/, entered its second week on Sunday, January 20. On that day I had announced my availability for around 1400 UTC in one of our Guided sandbox practice sessions  where I promise that Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear will be online to meet participants in-world and help in whatever way we can to get them up and functioning on our EVO Minecraft MOOC 1.12.2 server.

In my guise as Teacher Vance, I went online at the appointed time and found “Black_Kitten” there. The odd thing was, she was in the game in text chat, but I couldn’t find her on the map, here. She was confused herself about where she was. She had built a house somewhere on our server but had wandered away from it and now couldn’t get back to it.  So I offered to teleport to where she was, and I found her in a village with an extensive library and librarians who will trade emeralds for paper. But having joined her, I couldn’t even find myself on the map now, so we were both lost.

She said she could find her house if she could start back at the spawn point on our server, so we both warped there, to the Birch House, and she showed me how to get to her house from there. It was an interesting way: she entered a warp closet in the Birch House and we were both teleported to an area that Dakotah Redstone had recently located as a “wilderness” area, and once I’d followed her there I knew exactly what I was going to do for my streamed event which I had set the next day, and which I immediately announced as follows:

Mon Jan 21 1400 UTC – Learning2gether with EVO MInecraft MOOC – Wilderness adventure trek to Black_Kitten’s village to help develop the seaport there

I managed to stream it successfully and here is the recording (https://youtu.be/lIP_CiRfSgw):

Where? My instructions were to meet at Birch House on the EVO Minecraft MOOC 1.12.2 server. Birch House is the 2019 spawn point, or from anywhere on the server, you can use /warp 14k to get there.

Or join the stream: We wanted people to join us on the server, but I told people to look for what’s streaming on Vance’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/vancestev

i said we would use Dak’s Wilderness Warp in the BirchHouse to arrive in The Wilderness, an untamed and as yet unmapped place where the air is clear and the land pristine. When we arrive we’ll head west, the direction shown in this image.

But you can see in the video that when I got there, I told the group to go east, my bad – fortunately others knew the way so we eventually arrived at “Black Kitten’s Village,” which I also found out had another name, Riverbend.

Black Kitten had told me the day before that she wanted help finding clay to make flower pots and in setting up a kind of dock to act as an exchange point for travelers who might find her home. I followed up on that by adding a few planks of wood to the extended pier, but soon went off to try and find what others were doing.

Apart from that, the village, and the area, was interesting to explore.  Don Carroll (Abu Fletcher), Dakotah Redstone, Jane Chien, OliveTree Lighthouse, Mircea Patrascu, and Mattie had all turned out for it. The group soon focused on helping  Abu Fletcher build a swank California style house near the village. I built a tunnel from there up to a bridge that I discovered Dak had built (in case you were wondering what I was doing for much of my time in the video), and in the end we visited where OliveTree and Dak are curing a zombie on a mountain top near the 24k warp point, and learned some details about that process.

Earlier events

Sat Jan 12 1400 UTC Electronic Village Online 2019 Kickoff event

https://learning2gether.net/2019/01/12/learning2gether-with-the-2019-annual-electronic-village-online-kickoff-event/

EVO Minecraft MOOC also left a record of its first week of activity

Mon Jan 14 noon UTC – Guided sandbox practice – EVO Minecraft MOOC server with Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear

Vance and Bobbi team up to meet and greet visitors to the 2019 EVO Minecraft MOOC server each day this week at noon UTC

This is 4 am in California (say what??), 5 am in Colorado (maybe for lumberjacks), 6 am in Chicago (gotta be up for work anyway) but 7 am eastern time USA and western South America up through 11:00 in Brasil (y’all can manage that can’t you?)

The rest is easy: noon in London, 14:00 in Cape Town, 16:00 in Dubai and Moscow, 17:30 in New Delhi, 19:00 in Bangkok, 20:00 in S’pore and Shanghai, 21:00 in Seoul and Tokyo, and 23:00 in Sydney

What happened during the event

From: https://plus.google.com/u/0/106487653908364511859/posts/jQEHm3eCR5u

Mon Jan 14 1300 UTC – Dakotah Redstone and Maha Abelmoneim help you Hug a Creeper on the EVOMC 1.13 Aquatic server

“Share the Love” will be held on Monday, 14 January 2019, 13:00 UTC
This event will take place using Minecraft version 1.13, hosted on the “Aquatic” server 192.99.201.17:25571

How to join us? ADAPT these instructions:
http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/130258521/2019_Live_Events#Howtojoinus

How to adapt? Use these details where you enter the IP address of the server: 192.99.201.17:25571 and enter using a 1.13.2 profile

RECORDING from  the Share the Love – Hug a Creeper event at 1300 UTC Mon Jan 14

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/5SphD4qxg40

More information: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JaneChienTaipei/posts/YDXVuZwcbjo

About “Share the Love” – a.k.a. Hug a Creeper – lessons in seeing things differently, or “Why dying’s not so bad after all”. We’ll talk about the meaning behind the event during or after we finish it, according to the preferences of the participants.

NOTE: this event will take place using Minecraft version 1.13, hosted on the “Aquatic” server… If you would be interested in attending, please let us know if you need some assistance in getting more familiar/comfortable prior to the event.

Monday Jan 14 at 1800 UTC – The Treasures of The Halls of Knowledge On EVO Minecraft 1.12 Server

Follow the white path, read the signs, be guided by tiles of gold, listen to the messages, talk to helpful villagers and travelers, find your way to the halls of knowledge and claim your treasure of gold. Remember to take pictures and at the end take a selfie to show everyone your achievement.

This activity has two  main objectives:

1. Guide participants who are new to gaming in general and Minecraft in particular through learning the basic skills of how to move and interact with different in-game tools and items. 
2. Give participants an opportunity to  experience an example of some of the Minecraft items and functions/mechanics that can be used in learning activities.

Tue Jan 15 noon UTC – Guided sandbox practice – EVO Minecraft MOOC server with Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear

What happened during the event

Here, Teacher Vance shows Michiyo how to make a bed (she asked me how it was done)

The screenshot below shows my desktop showing my map view plus my Minecraft window where I had a crafting table open. I passed Michiyo a link to the screenshot in MC text chat so she could see how it was done. I had left her some wool in one of the boxes, and she already had the planks, so she made a bed which she carried with her on our next adventure

Here is the map which anyone can see through this link (zoomed in about 5 levels)
http://mc.evomc.net:8123/?worldname=Electronic%20Village%20Online%20Survival&mapname=surface&zoom=5&x=-1304&y=64&z=943#

Tue Jan 15 1300-2100 UTC Dak in Minecraft – Expedition to explore the Woodland Mansion

What happened during the event

We started out on a path not far from the 2018 Longhouse where Michiyo found a horse and mounted it while we waited for Dakotah Redstone to arrive and start the next adventure

It was getting dark (and Bobbi had to call her mom :-), so Vance and Michiyo warped to the Woodland Mansion, but it turned out to have been already tamed. I (Teacher Vance) saw from the map that we were not far from southeast of the spawn point for this year so we headed on a northwest trek, digging an L shaped cave to stay safe one night, then putting our beds on a well-lit beach the next (I always carry torches). I reached the Birch Mansion at the spawn point the following day but Michiyo, who had been trekking wonderfully for the past half hour, even following in swims downstream, somehow drowned just short of the goal. It was time to return to real life anyway 🙂 so I quickly completed the trip alone.

Wed Jan 16 noon UTC – Guided sandbox practice – EVO Minecraft MOOC server with Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear

What happened?

Michiyo was on the server but she had to go and tend to her studies. Mattie Tsai, Jane Chien’s son, was there and I noticed he was in the vicinity of a house he must have built in a swamp not far from the spawn point, so I headed out overland to reach the spot. It’s about a day’s trek from the spawn point if you know where you are going, but I didn’t so it took me longer, two nights. The second night I camped out on a beach on my bed and survived the night. Next morning I found myself surrounded by slime. Olivetree in Discord told me they were hostile, but I could slay them for slime balls, so I did that.

Moments later I found Mattie, mired in the swamp, and under attack by zombies which I slew snicker snack with my vorpal blade.

Maneuvering around Mattie I found that he was changing color from gray

To red, to grey / red, and back and forth again.  I sent a screen shot to Olivetree and Dak in Discord, for their diagnosis.

Dakotah in Discord explained that Mattie had unfortunately, erm, uh, passed away. His mom will be sorry to know that.

From there I retraced my steps back to my house near the spawn point and laid down a track as I went, in shoveled earth and in torches.

Next day I will try to improve the path. I may lay a similar one from the spawn point to the Woodland Mansion, though bereft of it’s original mobs, it seems to be of little interest to hard-core community members.

Thu Jan 17 noon UTC – Guided sandbox practice – EVO Minecraft MOOC server with Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear

What happened?

Today we all gathered at the longhouse (/warp longhouse). Several moderators were there as well as participant Michiyo, one of Abu Fletcher’s students. Mattie was around as well but somehow got stuck in the APLACKA

We decided to follow the river over to Jo Kay’s old place. We survived the night there. In the morning we went up the mountain looking for Rose Bard’s old place but  couldn’t recall how to get there. But I spotted a settlement of some kind to the northwest.

I was using the map and trying to keep the group together for most of the day. But people dropped back one by one. As you can see in the map view below, it’s after midnight already and I can see the lights of the village. I’m heading for it. It was getting late in real life too. I just wanted to reach it before I had to leave the server, or die in the attempt. I survived by spending the night in a tower.

Fri Jan 18 noon UTC – Guided sandbox practice – EVO Minecraft MOOC server with Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear

What we did

Michiyo appeared at the appointed time, and I joined her at the spawn point. We decided to go in search of the House of Knowledge which entails talking to avatars outside the birch house and then following the speckled white path to the riverside where boats are waiting. I got in a boat and invited her to do the same. I saw her in the river and she kept going down it in a fast-paced swim, so I followed. I finally caught up with her near the mouth of the river at the edges of terra incognito. Dusk was near, so we planted torches, laid out some beds, and made it light again, since it was only us on the server.

I asked if she wanted to go back or onward, she said onward, so we explored the coastline to a point where we could see Dak’s mushroom structure on the mountain top in the distance to the west.  It was getting dark so we set up beds in torchlight where we were and survived safely until it got light suddenly.

I said I would remain one more Minecraft day and suggested we head back toward the mushroom structure. We traveled through a forest and came to the back of the mountain where we climbed up toward the mushroom on the other side and walked on the top of it, where passing clouds sometimes obscured our view on the green valley below. It was getting dark so I started heading toward my home base via my mountain tunnel to the north.

I lost Michiyo suddenly and Dak told me in DIscord that she had found his secret tunnel and would emerge the other side, so I went down the mountain to try and intercept her. I could see on our map that we were right on top of one another, though she was inside the mountain. I started up the mountain to my tower on the top and since it was dark I laid torches for her to follow.

She found them and was soon nearby. We were nearing the top of the mountain and the tower when skeletons attacked. I managed to fight them off and head back uphill, passing Michiyo, but she was heading downhill, away from me and my shelter. It was time for me to leave in real life and I saw she had been slain by a zombie, so I went on up the mountain and followed my trail of light down the other side to my mountain eyrie. I took a screen shot at that point:

Sat Jan 19 noon UTC – Guided sandbox practice – EVO Minecraft MOOC server with Teacher Vance and Bobbi Bear

Teacher Vance and Olivetree Grove show Maestra Mirelle around the builds near the spawn point – images and YouTube

Maestra Mirelle was moving about quite well, following instructions in Discord and successfully swimming the river to enter the cave full of minerals at the Temple of Lost Knowledge.

To facilitate travel, I built a land bridge from the Temple of Lost Knowledge to the landform leading to my castle. I must remember to go back and remove it lest mobs use it for nefarious purposes.

I recorded this exploration of the Temple of Lost Places while waiting for Mirelle to appear

My posts to YouTube are tweeted automatically

Sat Jan 19 1300 UTC 1.13.2 server extreme survival adventure

Recordings

Abu Fletcher’s post
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105443014753998852123/posts/CEnaXTF9zCZ

Wow! That was something else. We managed to “survive” for 5 days. However, we took some casualties and we sure didn’t have Seal Team coordination. : )

It was too hectic for me to take any photos and while we communicated a LOT we were also talking over each other and often engaged in overlapping conversations much of the time (which is a possible feature of group interaction anytime there are more than three participants).

One failing (if we can consider it a failing) is that we never had any clear objective other than just surviving. I suppose that’s OK.

On the plus side, as a group, we divided tasks, shared resources, worked together, all of which required substantial language use. This would have been too overwhelming for my Japanese EFL learners, but would have worked for more intermediate learning, I think.

Dakotah’s “above the fray” view

(For best results, play videos on YouTube in HD or highest resolution possible)

Teacher Vance’s view from the trenches up to where he drowned in one of them

Jane reacted on Twitter

Learning2gether Episode 397

On Saturday, January 12, at 1400 UTC, coordinators, moderators, and some participants in the 2019 round of Electronic Village Online sessions met online for their annual Kickoff event. The event was held in Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/417142783

Zoom produced a recording of the event, now available on YouTube

The YouTube URL is https://youtu.be/pe2LW5U8Zzs

For the benefit of participants from Uzbekistan and other countries where YouTube is blocked, the recording was placed on Vimeo (courtesy of Nellie Deutsch)
https://vimeo.com/311321378

The PPT (actually a Google Slides presentation) for the Kickoff session was collaborated on by all the EVO coordinators. By kickoff time, it was ready to be shown to the world at large:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sJv-WPY5gXTONFZ-rhUddlZKyGh6QAsSTgE4LlURsD4/edit?usp=sharing

During the event all moderators present spoke about their individual sessions. Here are the  sessions on offer this year, followed by links to their descriptions:

• Basic_Linguistics_for_English_language_teachers
• CEFR Vs. Assessment:  How can new revisions help?
• Classroom-based Research for Professional Development
• Escape the Room
• Flipped Learning for Language Teaching
• Getting_Online as a teacherpreneur
• ICT4ELT2019
• Job oriented Training for ESP Teachers and sharing their findings globally and locally
• EVO Minecraft MOOC (EVOMC19)
• Moodle 4 Teachers (Teaching Online)
• Mother tongue use in the ESL classroom
• PBL all-round learning experience for ESL
• QR Codes in Action
• Teaching EFL to Young Learners
• Techno CLIL 2019
• Teaching Pronunciation Differently
• EVO information and Updates

Preparation for Best of EVO at the upcoming TESOL 2019 conference in Atlanta

Thursday, March 14 2019: 10:30-12:20 pm in Atlanta
Friday, March 15, 2019: 1:45 – 3:00 pm in Atlanta

The event ended with an invitation to all moderators of 2019 EVO sessions to join us either face-to-face in Atlanta in March for the 2019 TESOL conference or from a distance at either of the two events shown in slide 21 of the presentation embedded above.

EVO moderators are welcome to present (in person or online) but anyone will be able to watch the presentation when it is streamed live from Atlanta.

How to join us is explained on the slides

• Webcast 2019 plan and presenters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14B9nuymWhsU3OpW_3aM04I-f4oydBB35juLeJ7-Xygo/edit?usp=sharing
  • If you wish to participate, request to join that document.
• Session will be webcast live during the convention (closer to the date, visit http://callis2019.pbworks.com/. The link to the stream and instructions for uploading slideshows or other materials will be here.)
• The webcast will also be recorded and made available on the CALL-IS website. (http://www.call-is.org).

 

Earlier events

Learning2gether was in haitus over the end-of-year break, as were many of the other events we follow. In November “we” (meaning Vance) were in Chile for the WorldCALL conference, and in December I tried to catch up with the #el30 MOOC that Stephen Downes had been running.

Fri Nov 16 – Vance Stevens presents ‘Gamifying Teacher Professional Development through Minecraft MOOC’ at WorldCALL 2018

https://learning2gether.net/2018/11/16/vance-stevens-presents-gamifying-teacher-professional-development-through-minecraft-mooc-at-worldcall-2018/

 

Mon Dec 17 – Learning2gether with Stephen Downes about eLearning 3.0

https://learning2gether.net/2018/12/17/learning2gether-with-stephen-downes-about-elearning-3-0/