Minecraft Class, Introduction

So I teach a Minecraft class. I can practically hear your mouth crease into a condescending smile already.

But seriously, I'm entering into my fourth year teaching a Minecraft class, and I'm starting to get into a kind of groove with it. And now that I'm settled into more of a groove, I feel like taking down some of the stories that develop throughout the year. Believe me, there are plenty of them at this point, and unfortunately many of them get lost to the test of time because I never write them down!

First thing's first though. How can a person teach a Minecraft class, I hear you ask? How is that even educational? Well, before you might go on about how video games "aren't educational", here is what we do in Minecraft class. And I'll warn you, this is going to be loooong:

Early on in the first semester, we do a series of introductions, and we lay out a series of classroom rules. 

Among those rules are very strict criteria for what constitutes cyber bullying, or, as it is often called in the gaming world, "griefing". Many believe "griefing" and cyber bullying are two different things, but I believe they are one in the same, and I make it very clear to my students that I do not tolerate it in my classroom. Basically, the students' first lesson is that when you destroy something that somebody spent 2 months of their life making within a virtual world, that is going to affect them in the same way it would if you destroyed something they made in the physical world. They may have made it in the virtual world, but it still matters to them. It's still theirs. And you still destroyed it. So the general rule of thumb: "Would you do this to this person in real life? No? Then why would you do it to them in this game?"

Minecraft class takes place primarily within a virtual world, hosted on a server that I create within the classroom. 

This virtual world is very much like real life, except everything looks rather blocky. That blocky appearance is what you typically see on the screen when you look over someone's shoulder while they're playing. It's quite unimpressive to the untrained eye, but much exists within that blocky world that casual observers might fail to realize.

Within this virtual world, players can get hungry and starve to death. Players can fall off cliffs and seriously injure themselves. Players can be eaten by wolves, zombies, skeletons, giant spiders, and various other potential nighttime threats. Therefore, the first goal in the game when we start out is survival.

The first official assignment I give to the students is a critical thinking exercise - a kind of survey quiz that asks them open-ended questions about how they're going to get started. 

Questions like:

• What is your plan for sustainable food in the long run?
• How will you keep yourself fed if all the animals die out?
• What kind of land do you want to claim?
• What sorts of resources do you think are important to have near your house?
• How far are you going to venture into the wilderness to find where you want to build your house?
• What is your plan for material storage?
• How do you plan to protect your storage from potential thieves?
• How do you plan to make it clear that you have claimed an area, so others don't build on your land?

Anyway, the list goes on like that. Video game or not, I think these are real survival questions. If you were dumped into a large open world with nothing but yourself, these are questions you'd probably best ask yourself.

Students are heavily encouraged to find seeds throughout the world and start growing vegetables as soon as possible. Vegetation is a prime source of sustainable food. Students are also heavily encouraged to never kill the last two of any wild animal, so that those animals might reproduce and repopulate. If students run out and slaughter all the cows, that means there's no sustainable source of beef, milk, or leather left in that part of the world, until somebody ventures into the unknown and, maybe, finds more somewhere. Students have killed all the animals before in some of my classes, without bothering to breed them. This, more often than not, resulted in more than half the class dying of starvation because nobody imagined a world where they wouldn't have any animals left to eat. Almost nobody prepared for this, and almost nobody bothered to grow any sustainable food. There were only two farms in the class, and they were privately owned, and there wasn't enough food produced in the two of them to feed the entire class. That is why these critical thinking lessons now exist.

Once students are no longer fighting for survival, we move onto co-existing. 

Now, since they're not fighting for their life, they have time to turn their heads to each other and realize who their neighbors are. It is at this point that we split the class into groups. I present to them a lesson on various basic forms of government, and I give them an assignment handout to take home, with all the information on it. I ask them to pick the one that they think makes the most sense to them, and to have their decision by the next class period. They are allowed to google other options, and anything not on the handout is fair game, as long as they run the idea by me first.

The options I explain during class are as follows:

• Autocracy
• Constitutional Monarchy
• Democratic Republic
• Non-Representative Democracy
• Democratic Socialism
• Communism
• Anarchy

I also do a brief explanation of what an Oligarchy is, and I cite an example of how those can come into being by telling the story of when one developed within one of my previous classes.

When the students bring in their decisions, I tally them up on the whiteboard, and they become groups. So if 5 students chose democratic republic, then those 5 students form into a group and begin their journey as a democratic republic. Every government form on the list has a different method for determining the leader. A republic, obviously, would elect a leader by tallying votes, and they would vote on what the name of the group should be. We set aside a large chunk of time during class for the democratic groups to talk amongst themselves about how they view the future of the group, and we hold an election to determine the president.

But an autocracy, since it's a bit of a toss-up who becomes emperor in real life, I leave it up to a roll of dice in the classroom. Whoever has the highest roll gets to be the autocratic leader, and the leader chooses their own title name (emperor, empress, king, queen, monarch, autocrat, etc), and chooses the name of the group.

Anarchy is a particularly special case. The only rules for those who choose anarchy is that the citizens must live in the same general vicinity nearby, in the same town. I tell them "It's like the wild west, but without a sheriff." Of course the classroom and server rules still apply, but there are no special rules for how their group is to operate unless they come up with those rules themselves.

I'm sure many would wonder why I even made anarchy an option.

Well I'll let you in on something... Anarchy groups never actually stay as anarchy. Throughout the school year, most of the groups shift in nature, and they evolve to meet the needs of their citizens. Most anarchy groups evolve into an unofficial form of non-representative democracy without the students even realizing it. I point it out to them and ask if I should change what I have listed in the group roster. So far they have always admitted that they've changed, and they have me change the list to confirm it.

I don't focus on telling the students how to operate within their chosen government unless they ask for my advice. I ultimately let them figure that part out themselves, letting them debate how things should be run when issues arise, which can sometimes lead to changes in leadership, or changes in government altogether.

From this point, after the students have chosen forms of government and been split into teams, the rest of the class takes place within that context.

So now we move on. We're all in groups, we all have our governments. Where do we go from here? 

Well, I figure what's the harm in pitting all the governments into a friendly competition for resources and technological advancement?!

For the next 5-6 months, I give the students lessons on various technology concepts and efficiency strategies, to see which things catch their attention the most. 

These technology lessons often include proper blacksmithing, where you melt down ores, pour them into casts, wait for the poured metal to harden, and combine the various parts that have hardened into tools. This method, in Minecraft, can create far superior tools than the regular way students typically make tools.

Other examples of what we could cover in class could be: 

• Creating new alloys by mixing molten metals. For example, copper and tin make bronze, a potentially cheaper alternative to iron.
• Basic electrical science, for generating electricity.
• How to build a basic electric furnace/stove for melting ores, or cooking food.
• How to refine oil into more potent forms of fuel.
• How the basic physics of large and small gears work, multiplying or dividing torque and speed.
• How to create steam engines for powerful and fairly cheap rotational energy.
• How to create internal combustion engines, for efficient ore processing and drills for mining sites.
• How to generate power from the thermal radiation produced by the sun (how to make solar panels).
• How to create electric motors for solar powered engines.
• How to create vacuum pipes using engines to transfer items or liquids quickly through a tube from point A to point B.
• How to build a jet turbine with enough torque to mine/grind through the bedrock mantle of the Earth.
• How to build a computer within the game using Minecraft redstone.
• How to apply theoretical physics to some of the fictional items in Minecraft, allowing the conversion of matter and energy.
• Building a computerized storage system so you may convert your physical items into electrical data, to be stored on a hard drive.

Anyway, the list goes on. Our imaginations are really the only major limits on what we can do within the virtual world of this class.

So the groups are all working on making fancy technology for the rest of the class?

A large amount of time is spent showing the students how a lot of this stuff works. But bear in mind, when it comes time for them to actually work on these pieces of technology, they have to mine the resources themselves. They have to make every single component from scratch. They have to spend a great deal of time and effort working on these projects within the game, and sometimes they don't have the materials they need to finish the project they're working on.

Remember, now, that all of this is within the context of those government groups. This is when mutual bartering trade comes into the mix, and groups will start communicating with each other, often delegating the communication with other groups to a chosen or elected ambassador.

But bartering trade is not all we cover in the class either!

Once it looks like the groups are prospering fairly well, and they're settled into roles within their groups, and they have some projects going, I introduce the "Concepts of Currency" assignment. 

This is the assignment where students learn about the world history of paper money. How is was conceived, how it was received by the public in concept, how long it took before it caught on, and how meaningless it truly is without context.

After watching some videos that explain through all of this history of currency, I give the students a survey quiz assignment asking them various questions about what they learned, and what knowledge they're going to take away from those videos. 

Then, after they answer those questions, I give them a choice. Do they believe we should adopt a form of currency to use within the class, or do they think we should stick with a bartering trade system instead?

Thus far, every one of my classes has chosen to adopt a form of currency. In the event a class does not adopt a form of currency, I would tell them that if they change their mind, we can hold another vote.

The currency that we have used in all my Minecraft classes thus far has been thaumium, a fictional metal that cannot be produced by the students, and is therefore finite within the game world.

Students are each given 24 thaumium ingots by me, and I am the only person in the game world that can create the substance. Thaumium ingots can be turned into nuggets and blocks. The conversation rate is as follows:

• 9 thaumium nuggets = 1 thaumium ingot
• 9 thaumium ingots = 1 thaumium block

Shortly before personally giving all the students 24 thaumium ingots each, I introduce them all to a document I typed up called the "Thaumium Standard", which displays the general value guide for thaumium, in relation to other commonly traded materials. Any materials not listed in the Thaumium Standard document should have their prices estimated based on the other prices listed. This document becomes available on the class Canvas page, in case anybody needs to reference it, and I type up the conversion rates on signs at the neutral trading post building.

After introducing this thaumium currency to the class, the group ambassador conversation you hear within the classroom slowly begins to sound like real merchants buying and selling on the streets. The thaumium standard was intended for students to get an idea of the general value levels for things, but as the market gets competitive for certain high-demand materials, the prices start to increase and decrease as supply and demand fluctuate. If groups neglect their food supplies and farms, a food shortage can cause the price of food to fluctuate at different locations, where food is more or less abundant.

So there you have it! That's my explanation of what we do in Minecraft class. For now. Who knows? It changes over time.

There is plenty more to this class, but most of the material is based on what the students respond to, and what feels natural to introduce at the time. Much of the content is student-driven in that way, and a great deal is honestly improvised as I go.

In this series of blog posts, I'm going to take down some stories that come to mind from these classes. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with everything in my life AND still type in this blog. I guess only time will tell if that actually happens. I'm making the attempt nonetheless!

The Comments Section, Part 4 (Dating Advice)

One of my students asked me for dating advice yesterday, and I posted on Facebook that that had happened, and that it was a rather strange experience.

Somebody asked me what advice I gave that student. Here was my reply:

I avoided telling him any specifics or details relating to my own personal life, because that's private and separate. What I told him was basically this:

The most successful relationships I've been in were the ones where one of us initially turned the other down, and yet we continued to spend time together as friends. I think this was successful because it demonstrated that we weren't pursuing the other person simply because they were a "potential mate", but rather, we genuinely liked the other person and wanted to spend time with them, romance or no.

Obsessing over the person to the point where you no longer see them as an individual is what you want to avoid. They are a person, not a piece of meat. Instead, if you truly find them interesting, spend time with them and just enjoy their company, rather than focusing on what you hope to get out of it. The more time you spend together, the deeper a connection you will build, and the more opportunities you both might have to experience potentially tender moments. And enjoy the time you spend together in those moments, rather than using them as an excuse to push things forward at a faster pace.

And of course, communicate. You can't get too far when you're only guessing at what each other is thinking ;)

The Comments Section, Part 3 (Hate Speech)

In response to a Facebook post about free speech, I left this comment:

I think freedom of speech is like when a kid calls another kid an ugly freak, and the other kid smacks him upside the head for calling him that. The kid has the right to say that, but he also has to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Another person then asked me what I thought hate speech was. This was my reply:

Words that repress or restrain people, reinforcing ideas of inferiority, despite being purely based on sociological bias without fact.

The equivalent of a kid throwing rocks at another kid because her skin color looks different from most of the other kids; turns out the kid's parents said things that put down people with dark skin, and so the kid thought it was okay to throw rocks at her.

Or maybe another kid publicly ridiculed a girl because she was trying to reprogram a video game, and that's a "boy" thing to do, and girls aren't good at that.

Hateful words spread to others and often cut more deeply than physical actions, affecting them for the rest of their lives. Consistent hateful words can systematically and subconsciously plant bias in people's heads that cause them to believe the hateful words as fact - even those being repressed.

Exposed to this hate speech over time, that black kid might eventually believe she is an inferior being, even though she is a human, just like everyone else. That could cause her to aim lower in life, and instead of getting a career in neuroscience, she may be stuck working retail at minimum wage, because she, and so many others, said she isn't capable of being a scientist.

That programmer girl might begin to believe she's bad at programming, even if she's brilliant at it. Instead of a high salary job working at Google, she may never go to college, because it's expected of her, as a girl, to stay at home and mother children. She has been told this so long that she, herself, now believes it.

Hate speech is what made you assume that the second girl in this story was white.

I believe that's what hate speech is, and that's what it creates. That is what it does to people. My view may be a bit too broad for realistic political application though.

The Comments Section, Part 2 (Education Rant)

As an educator, and a human being who learns, I have random thoughts about education. This started as a Facebook status based on a comment I left, but I expanded a little, since I felt like ranting.

It feels to me like too many educators don't actually understand how learning works, and what kids need in order to maximize not only their education, but their overall growth as a human being and their overall quality of life.

Education and fun are not two separate things. The things that inspire passion and fun within kids are the very things that help inspire them toward their careers, and yet these things are so often pushed down in favor of the things students hate doing the most.

If students can Google the answers to tests, and their research skills are adept enough to thoroughly answer the questions, then they can do the same thing to get by in real life. Google is a powerful and valuable tool, so why prevent students from teaching themselves how to use it?

It's like a calculator. Everybody said I needed to learn long division and algebra because I wouldn't have a calculator on me all the time. Well you know what? That's a bloody lie. I have one in my pocket everywhere I go now. I never freaking need long division, and the only reason I ever use algebra is for programming, which is an entirely different context than how they taught it anyway. Using Google doesn't seem any different than using a calculator. If it's relevant to my life, I'll figure it out when I need to. If I need to calculate a tip, I'll pull out my calculator.


Just let the kids research the answers. They'll put more effort into the subjects they're passionate about, and those are the subjects they'll excel at in life because you let them focus on them, instead of exhausting them with things they don't care about. Why force things on them so harshly when all the real world is is googling what you don't know anyway?

It's so frustrating to me how little people care about education. Parents just drop their kids off at school and consider it out of sight and out of mind. Any issues with their kids' education is considered not their problem, and yet a kid's education is one of the most important parts of their development. When a kid is doing poorly in school, the parents' response is often negative, reinforcing that the kid needs to study more, or work harder, or stop slacking off. So rarely do most parents stop and think about the issue being with the way the kid is being taught, or that maybe the school itself isn't a good fit for the kid. Or, godforbid, maybe it's a subject the kid can simply skip and take care of later in life, when it becomes more relevant to their lives.

This is not an issue that can be solved by throwing money around. This is an issue with the school systems themselves. They cater to the idea that every human child should learn the same exact material in the same exact way, rather than the fact that all human beings are individual people with different interests, hobbies, and talents. Everything must be tested with statistics and math to determine the maximum potential effectiveness of the education, right? Like making up the budget for a company, they're trying to maximize the profits. But human beings are not currency, nor robots. We are not all the same, and we do not follow perfect logical rules, nor are we completely predictable by mathematics and statistics. We don't all fall into the cookie cutter laid out for us.

When a student hates a subject, the educators and parents cut the focus on the subjects that student likes in favor of the subject the student struggles with, instead of allowing the student to excel and perfect the subjects they're passionate about. If that subject is truly important for the student to learn for later in their life, what's the big deal about waiting until later in their life to learn it? Would it not be easier to learn that subject after is has become more relevant to the student's life?

This negativity and pressure and stress kills their ambition. It kills their love for learning. It can stunt their ability to learn the subject even worse, as they grow to despise the subject.

Anyway... I guess my rant is over. I guess I'll end this on a positive note. I am very happy that the school I work at understands this and allows me the freedom to teach my classes the way I want to, because the students at our school are thriving so much, and they all seem so much happier than at other schools I've been to. At least there are some places out there fighting for the education options our kids deserve!

The Comments Section, Part 1 (Political History)

So I've begun to realize that I produce so much writing online in comments sections, and it's completely wasted in there. It just gets lost in the void, and it really doesn't even make much impact. So I thought maybe I should, at least, log some of this stuff away on my blog! At least this way it doesn't get lost in the void and I could potentially copy and paste it for future reference.

So yeah. I'm going to try to make this a thing, and I'm calling it "The Comments Section".

I saw this image in the comments section on a Facebook post.

This is actually only half correct. The democratic party split into two pieces during the Civil War, Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats were the ones advocating for slavery, and many of their ideals most closely resemble today's "Tea Party" Republicans. This is not an opinion based on bias, this is based on US history research. Northern Democratic ideals have somewhat merged with the Republican party ideals of that time, becoming what we know today as the Democratic party.

Yes, they swapped places, but it's also important to note that there were technically three parties at this time, and when running for re-election, Lincoln was not running as a member of the Republican party, but a member of the National Union party.

The temporary new party was created because people would choose not to vote Republican simply because of the name, rather than the actual policies being spoken by the candidate, and this choice made it more likely to get votes from both War Democrats and Peace Democrats on the northern side.

Ultimately, let us not forget that even before all of this, before we fell so deeply into a two party system, two of the big parties arguing the same stuff we currently are were the Federalist party and the Democratic-Republican party - Federalists typically leaning toward current-day Republican arguments, and Democratic-Republicans leaning toward more current day Democratic values.

Laziness

I think the laziest thing I've ever done was when I sat down at my laptop about 9 years ago, completely prepared to not move from my position for at least a few hours, only to realize that I needed to get something off my desktop PC. We had a network share in the house, but unfortunately, the files I needed were not shared over the network yet.

Instead of going upstairs to get the files off my desktop, I got an idea and opened Google. I began to research methods of remote controlling my desktop. It took me about 4 or 5 minutes before I came up with a way to remote control my PC from anyplace that had an internet connection, networked or no. But I needed to install software on my upstairs PC to do it.

So instead of going upstairs, I rigged a quick temporary remote control via Windows remote desktop over our home network, to remote control my upstairs PC to install the remote control software. After getting that done, I used the remote control software to set up a VPN between the two computers. A VPN which would remain active for full file sharing no matter where I was. I shared my entire user and program files folders over that VPN.

Boom! I began copying the files I needed! Didn't have to move, and the whole thing took maybe 15-20 minutes. Since then, it has saved me so much unnecessary getting up off the couch, it was completely worth it in the long run.

My mind is almost never lazy. My body, on the other hand, well... That's another story ;)

Thoughts on Christianity

I have some thoughts...

This is a sensitive subject for a lot of people. These are merely my thoughts on Christianity as a whole, good and bad, my experiences with it, and how it has changed over time. I have no right to tell people what they can and cannot believe, and I have no right to tell people how they should live their lives.

When I was around age 8, I began to seriously question my Christian upbringing, because some things just weren't adding up. I'm rather proud of myself for thinking so critically as such a young age; it feels like my core ethical values have hardly changed since then in that respect. I feel I can thank Calvin and Hobbes for much of my analytical and critical thinking development. But I digress.

Unfortunately, few people wanted a small child to critically analyze their religion, and I was never taken seriously, so I rarely, if ever, asked these questions. And when I did, they were often not adequately answered to quell my thirst for knowledge. So often I heard the "you just gotta have faith" response, which left me extremely unsatisfied, and felt to me more like "I don't know, stop asking me questions. That's just the way it is." I've never been one to respond well to a "that's just the way it is" answer.

Here are a few of the questions I remember asking myself from ages 8-12:

-Who wrote the Bible? Was it Jesus?

-Who decided what to write in the new testament? Wasn't that written after Jesus and his disciples died?

-If the Bible can be re-written by people, couldn't anyone just put whatever they want in there for us to worship in his name?

-If we're worshiping Jesus, why does so much of the bible have teachings from people who are not Jesus?

-Why do the disciples of Jesus say things that sometimes conflict with the things Jesus himself says? And why are we following their words in these cases rather than his?

-Why do we decorate a tree on Christmas? What does that have to do with Jesus' birth? And aren't we killing a tree?

-Why is Santa Claus the mascot of Christmas instead of Jesus?

-Why were the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night during December? Shouldn't the sheep be inside at night, where it's warm?

-Is it possible to be a good person without being Christian?

-If Jesus was trying to tell everyone to love each other, and we worship Jesus for that ideal, why don't Christians love gay people just as we would anyone else?

-If God created us, and everything happens according to God's plan, why do Christians hate people who aren't Christian? Aren't all people created by God, whether they believe it or not?

-If someone were gay, wouldn't that be a part of God's plan? Isn't everything that happens a result of God's plan?

-If the ten commandments say "thou shalt not kill", why did Christians kill so many people in the crusades?

Now since I asked these questions, I have asked many more. More than are coming to mind right now, of course, and many more over the years after I was 12. And over those years I have received/researched answers to most of them, and I have come to some conclusions. One being that most of the deeper messages read into the faith were a combination of lost in translation, interpreted/written through the personal bias of another human being, and the more people read into the deep lore, the fewer examples they will find of the actual core values shown through the actual words of Jesus Christ and the ten commandments, which were supposedly provided to us directly by God.

I find that most people I encounter who call themselves Christian are not actually demonstrating the core teachings of Christianity at all, except to other people who identify as Christian. The teachings of Jesus and the ten commandments are broken by many Christians on a regular basis, most notably through their contempt for other people who live their lives differently than they do, or otherwise in a way they don't, and/or are unwilling to, understand.

"Love thy neighbor" does not have a footnote that says, "but only if they are also Christian."

Over the years so many different churches would focus on so many different aspects of the bible with so many interpretations, that the whole thing divided. And thus, many people have many different ideas about what it means to be Christian. This is less often demonstrated in the words they speak, because they are so often directly quoted, but rather the actions they take. Oftentimes they are unknowing that their actions are even hurting anyone, and unwilling to hear people out when they try to tell them to stop.

I believe many Christians are simply using their Christianity as a title to describe themselves, to feel like they belong to a larger community of like-minded people. And hey, many people have done things like that to feel included. We're a social species, and we like to feel like we belong somewhere. But many people may be Christian simply because they feel it is expected of them, or they were raised to be that way, so it's all they know.

I believe the teachings of accepting things as being fact with nothing but blind faith as proof has helped turn many Christians into people who do not question authority, do not ask why things have to be the way they are, and do not think honestly about figuring out who they are as a person, since they often live through the religion instead of through themselves. And to reinforce this even further, there's an ultimate eternal punishment if you stray from your religion: Hell. But I'd rather not focus on that right now.

It's a darn shame these behaviours so often make it difficult to have calm conversations about this stuff, because through patience, understanding, and actively listening to each other, we could solve a lot of issues that lead to verbal abuse and other forms of violence performed in the name of God. But so many issues are shrugged off as being blasphemous, ridiculous, "impolite", or any other number of excuses to not talk about it openly.

In contrast, the LGBTQ community (I mention it because it's a large part of my life) is largely built on the foundations of being true to one's self and accepting/recognizing people for who they are. I guess it would make sense that people who are trained to live through the teachings of someone else and trust it with blind faith would find issue with people who live to do the opposite - to learn about themselves, constantly ask questions, and try to live according to what makes them truly happy, rather than living in fear according to what they think a higher power wants.

And yet, at the core of Christian religion, through all this control and blind faith and fear, is a contradictory message. A message that says people should love one another, no matter who they are. A message that shows Jesus as a simple carpenter who kneels and washes people's feet, feeds the poor, and heals the needy, whether they be old, young, male, female, rich, poor, celibate, prostitute, straight, gay... It doesn't matter. What matters is that he showed them love - he equally spread love for other people, regardless of who they were. That is the man who is supposed to be at the center of this faith, and that is at the core of what Christianity is supposed to stand for. That is how it started.

I believe that is a truly admirable ideal to have at the core of a belief system, spreading love to all those around you, treating everyone like family, as fellow human beings. It's just a shame more Christians don't demonstrate this in practice with people they don't understand, and instead they search the Bible for ammunition to fight them. Can we please just stop trying to attack one another and say live and let live?

We're all humans here, trying to get by and live our lives as happily as we can. If we don't understand someone, how about instead of finding ways to hurt them, we try to get to know them, human to human? Surely they'll have at least one interesting story to tell about their lives, as we all do.