With this lesson, I created a task involving rate and ratio in a real-world area, a park in the virtual setting of Minecraft. Using Amulet was key in the creation of this world. Amulet is third-party map editor I already had several schematics of cars that I could import to the parking lot. The Parking lot was also copied, pasted, and modified using Amulet. It was altered by doubling the size to accommodate the size of the cars and semi-trucks. The road was also copied and pasted a few times over. The trees were created in a different world and copied into this one. To prevent the use of teleportation out of the created zone, I placed command blocks underground, disabling the use of such items. In the settings menu, I set the world to “immutable world”, preventing any destruction of the world. I placed NPC’s with the information needed to solve several problems. As I created this world, I also had a word document opened to type up questions while I created the world.
The process took about an hour from start to finish. Issues that cropped up during the lesson required immediate problem-solving. Here is what I encountered:
First, the student characters were all immediately killed as soon as they joined the world. I had the world set to “adventure” as they entered. After a few minutes of student craziness at not being able to do anything, I changed the setting to “creative mode” Then all students were able to enter freely. I set the world to an immutable world, though that was probably unnecessary as I had a bedrock layer of Deny blocks under the grass. At the end of class, I started to play with the settings to see why the world had to be “creative” for students to play. My best guess is that I had a command block coded to “kill all entities” to counter anything that students may try to drop in this world. I had also coded a block to “kill all players”; however, I destroyed the block before turning off the block. I think the coding stuck as a result. I will continue to try and see if that is the case
Second, some of the laptops did not have Minecraft loaded on them
Third, my laptop lost internet connection at times during the lesson, causing students to get kicked. As it turned out, the wire was loose in the switch (router), creating an intermittent signal.
One student out of the 15 was able to finish the assignment. Some students only got to number three because being on Minecraft is just a lot to take in. I spent most of class time problem solving, so I could not prompt students as much as I would have liked. I certainly plan to learn from these lessons and do this again at some point.