intro to computercraftedu

We only have a few weeks left and will be goofing around for the most part so I thought I would go ahead and do a recap of what happened in our club this past semester.

Turtles! Most of the kids (girls and boys) seemed to really get into the turtle challenge. Some as young as 1st grade. Just like real life, there were some wins and some losses. We all learned something here. I am not an educator. At best I am an ‘Aha!’-facilitator. These are some of the aha moments I acquired:

to let them choose their own problem to solve – their programs were so different from one another because I left that open-ended
lots of payoff when it is the project of their choosing: determination, quality, pride of ownership
to let them go at their own speed. The student that impressed/taught me the most did not use my recommended repeat loop structure at all – he wanted to do it the way in a way that makes sense to him first and he was absolutely right
how much fun code-coaching is. Lots of high fives and victory dances. I ~~think~~ know that I actually squealed a few times.
how challenging it is to have students new to Minecraft alongside students focusing on learning to code – the usual ‘ask 3 then see me’ disrupts the other players that are working on their code.
the benefits of running a short ‘how-to’ at the beginning of our session (i.e. turtle 101, turtle remote 101, setting up a repeat loop structure, save to disk, turn disk into the chest)
how taxing a huge map with 60 players (all with multiple turtles) is on one server
the power of natural curiosity combined with their passion for Minecraft- it allowed me to introduce coding to a room full of kids in an after school setting where they are oftentimes bOnKeRs
how surprisingly well and independently most kids worked throughout the session with one-on-one moments from me when they got stuck
some needed the carrot-on-a-stick to get past the initial frustration of learning something new and REALLY wanted that carrot when they were done (the carrot being any one game item of their choosing, e.g. a diamond block)
there was not enough time to truly do up a proper vote for the best program. Hopefully I’ll have time for students to present their work to each other next week. We will give each other big rounds of applause.
to provide a few worlds for students to work within (one creative/one survival). The next creative world I will set up will include a well-defined challenge that requires some planning on their part. It will have a boundary of border blocks to keep players on task and prevent server lagging.
how unbelievably valuable my middle-school server admin is to me – Kate – I love you girl! She would work with one skill-level set of students while I would work with the other. This gave me time to work one-on-one with students learning to code. She was also my closer – helping me clean up the lab each day. She is an amazing player and a great leader.
just how sweet some of these kids are – some would straggle behind and help Kate clean up
how fun and productive learning in a virtual environment can be when you keep the learning self-paced, personal and natural. They made this sign below – I did not tell them to do that. 🙂 Okay, I did make them pose with floppy disks in front of it.