Learning2gether Episode 436
See Jane’s take on this same event
See Mattie’s perspective on the event he created
Skip down to Earlier Events
On Saturday February 15 in the 13:30 UTC time slot organized mainly by Jane Chien, EVO Minecraft MOOC held what was perhaps the final Play and Learn event for EVOMC20 to take place on the “classic” 1.12.2 server for the Electronic Village Online sessions just ended. Jane asked that the session be recorded and Vance and Olivetree (Maha) both complied.
Vance’s recording is here, at https://youtu.be/ati9_FQrU2A
Mattie’s recording of the last half hour, here https://youtu.be/VAxRqI2dego, starts about where Vance’s leaves off 🙂
In this event, Mattie (Jane’s precocious young son) had set up a contest in which he had placed sheep in a specially constructed flat map on the classic server. At a signal, participants were to collect wool from the sheep until all the sheep were gone. At the end of that round we moved via a series of portals to other locations where more sheep were kept. At the end of each round of wool gathering lightning would strike and set the sheep alight as well as spread to players if they weren’t careful to avoid the conflagrations. Those scenes were very dramatic :-). At the end of all the rounds, players deposited their wool in boxes set out for them and the wool was counted and multiplied out by the number of points each color was worth to get a total points for each player. We then entered a final warp where there was a special stand erected as if in a sporting event where the winner took the highest position, 2nd place slightly lower, 3rd place, etc. The winners were announced and photos taken of them on the podium. It was all great fun, and a powerful illustration of the powers Mattie had acquired under Magician Dak’s tutelege, which if you asked me (or perhaps his mom), would have contributed to his fluency in English.
Another illustration of his powers came on my arrival in the game where Dak had just died (some think it was suicide) due to a set of armor that had been given him by Mattie. When I arrived Dak’s possessions were still on the ground (players in this version of the game would lose their possessions when they were ‘killed’ in game, and these objects would be on the ground ready for anyone to scoop up). I saw the armor and picked it up and despite warnings from other players not to do so, I put it on. It turned out that Mattie had put a curse on the armor, it could not be removed, and the player would experience strange behavior including death rattles while trying to get rid of it. So that was me, and I managed to record myself going through this experience in the video I recorded. Later when Emmanuel (Rose’s equally precocious son 🙂 arrived, he put on the armor, and experienced the same. I had switched off my recording by then but perhaps Olivetree got it on hers.
It was a nice end to our EVO session, if indeed it was the end. Tomorrow we will be in the official EVO closing ceremony scheduled at 1400 UTC, the hour after we normally meet (at 1300) for the EVOMC20 sessions that Jane has been leading consistently throughout this year’s sessions. Other events that met consistently throughout this year’s event were the ones organized by Olivetree Grove at 1600 UTC almost every day, and those that took place on the 1.14.2 Haliwell server at 19:30 UTC each day put on by Dakotah Redstone and Carol Rainbow.
These aforementioned moderators between them put on at least 50 live events, according to my count at
http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/134715012/2020_Live_Events, and that list (of 48) does not have all of them. Thanks to them, and to Aaron Schwarz who overcame obstacles to get the server back up and running for us, and others such as Kim Harrison and Beth Ghostraven who hosted us at VSTE, and Abu Fletcher who had to bicycle in the snow to his office in the middle of the night to join us due to the impending and eventually actual destruction of his living quarters (and byzantine delays in getting Internet installed in his current abode, which still hasn’t happened) whew, where did this sentence begin?? and to others as well whom I might have neglected to mention, EVOMC20 can be considered to have been a great success!
At the event last night, there was some talk of finding a common platform for next year. This past year we were divided into silos where some of us followed the proceedings at Groups.io and others adhered to Facebook. We discussed carrying forward with the Moodle provided to us by Nellie Deutsch, which she has kindly provided us but which we didn’t activate for this year, and looking into Schoology, which Teacher Vance is using for some online workshops he’s giving over the next three weeks. Talk of a 7th year of EVOMC(21) is always encouraging, a sign that what we have spawned over the past 6 years has transformed into a true community of prractice.
Thanks to all our fine moderators past and present who contributed in many small and in many very large ways as well to this grand endeavor.
Details of the event tonight (or afternoon or morning, depending on where you are on the planet)
When: Saturday, 15 February 2020, 1:00pm to 2:00pm, (GMT+00:00) UTC
Where: EVO Minecraft and Discord Servers
Organizer: Jane Chien and Vance Stevens
Description: Yes, we’ve reached the last week of EVOmc and it’s time to reflect. However the playing and the learning continues. Join us to continue exploring, building, trading and learning. If you have questions, ideas, suggestions bring them all with you.
Groups.io Link to message #187
Jane’s take on this same event
Jane’s post to the EVOMC group on Facebook was more descriptive than mine, above
Jane Chien to EVO Minecraft MOOC
Thanks for participating in the wool race that Mattie built. There were three rounds of wool sheering with a point system assigned to the different colors of wool, one point for white wool and 10 points for color/Jeb wool. We were all going for the Jeb sheep but Olivetree was the lucky person who found all the Jeb sheep, one for each round.
The first round was in a desert. Then a portal opened where we were dropped to the second round, which is the overworld. We were bounced off to a field of green slime blocks with grass growing on it. When we sheered off all the wool from the sheep, strikes of lightning were aiming towards the sheep and we had to avoid being struck by lightning. (Mattie, why the lightning?)
Unluckily, Vance was struck when we were ready for the third round, which was the Nether. Oh, no! He lost his sheers after he respawned. I immediately gave him my spare ones.
There were so many sheep in the Nether round that I got so excited until I found out there was another round of lightning and we had to stay away from the sheep in order not to be struck by lightning. Olive shouted: “But I’m away from the sheep!!!! I was standing away from the sheep when I got struck!” Dak explained that there was an area of effect so we needed to stay far away from the sheep. I was so happy that in the end, we all survived the last round!!!
After calculating the points, the winners were teleported to the winner’s podiums and there were fireworks in the background to celebrate their wins!!! Congratulations, Dak, for winning the first place, Olive for winning second, Joe for winning the third place, and Vance the fourth place. I only got 164 points so I was there with Emanual to take pictures and congratulate them! Hurray!!
Here is the thumbnail view from Jane’s Facebook post after the event, from which the above text is taken
and one more thing, Vance Stevens
posted on FB that Jane couldn’t help but tell her breakout group in the EVO annual live wrapup event for 2020 about Mattie Tsai‘s accomplishments, and when the participants reconvened Mike Kenteris relayed that information to the whole group, and on YouTube, as you can see here,
https://youtu.be/pL0Z-CtAahw?t=650
Mattie’s perspective as developer and game controller
The recording itself is at the top of this blog post, or here on YouTube – https://youtu.be/VAxRqI2dego
More perspectives
Jane Chien Thank you so much, Vance!!! Thanks for giving Mattie the opportunity to learn to host this game. He still has so much to learn and thank you for this wonderful experience! I really enjoy watching your video and Mattie’s as well! I did not know Mattie could record the game.
Jane Chien Aaron Schwartz Thank you so much for hosting the classic server! We wouldn’t have had such great fun learning together without having the variety of options to in-game play, the fun plugins like GodMode and all! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!
Olivetree’s post continues, after language learning …
Also, the learning doesn’t stop. When you want to learn something new, if you need help, or you just want to play and experiment while having a chat, just drop us a line on Discord letting us know when you’d like to meet. We will also announce whenever we have community play time. Lastly, you are most welcome to drop in and play on either of the servers, EVO and Haliwell anytime you feel like it.
Nice wrapup 🙂
Earlier events
Sun Feb 9 0420-0450 UTC – LEARNING2GETHER 435 – Vance Stevens on Teaching English through practical projects in coding
Mon Feb 10 CodeVA Computer Science Educator of the Year at VSTE Space in SL
CodeVA Computer Science Educator of the Year at VSTE Space
Monday, February 10th, at 5 PM SLT, come hear Willoughby Lorefield (Fara Faust in RL) share information about about CodeVA and their mission to bring computer science to every student in Virginia. She will also share teacher education opportunities offered through CodeVA.
Hope to see everyone there! http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Soulgiver/171/130/58
http://www.codevirginia.org/about/
See the announcement at VSTE.org
https://vste.org/cs-teacher-of-year-joins-vste-in-second-life/
Joining Second Life
If you don’t have a Second Life account get one, it’s free. We recommend setting one up at the Rockcliffe University Consortium’s Gateway here:https://urockcliffe.com/reg/second-life/ Download and install the software. While your Second Life viewer (software) is open click this linkhttp://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Soulgiver/155/144/58 and voila! Look for an avatar on VSTE Island and say, “Hey, I’m new!” We will take care of the rest.
Learning2gether 
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