A Butterfly Emerges

I have always wanted to be a teacher, but found the classroom stifling, limiting, and frankly, very boring during my first two years of undergrad; so, I stopped double majoring and focused on performing on my horn.  This experience has changed my mind forever about teaching a "normal" class.  As a music student, the most boring classes I have taken were my music theory and history classes, yet these are foundational to future success as a teacher or performer.  Making them as exciting as possible should be any teacher's goal.  I am really starting to formulate a plan for my Master's project, either through developing my Minecraft music theory lesson into an aural theory class, or develop an entire Music History I or II course on OpenSim.  I would love to share this in one of the music educator's journals and encourage other teachers to find ways to communicate that combine aural and visual stimuli to add to the learner's retention.  This is my 22nd course (or 63rd credit) at the Master's level and has to be the best course I have taken.  I have been trying to find my way in the academic world, and I have found a purpose to my learning and a direction I finally want to go.  I came in as a caterpillar and have emerged as a butterfly.  I hope that I can get an opportunity to collaborate in the future with others who are passionate about virtual learning and be a catalyst for folks in music education to leave preconceptions behind and see the (virtual) world of possibilities!

Thank you, Dr. Peter, Ty and Ivan, for an exceptional course that has caused me to grow in so many ways.  My mind has been opened and expanded.  Thank you to the resource team, J-Star (Cody) and Nancy, for the great resources we combined that led me to my ideas for our Minecraft build.  Thank you to Ed and Nancy for giving me the most positive collaborative experience I have had online or F2F and for allowing me to be as creative as I wanted.  We make a fantastic team!  Thank you to the entire class for sharing your wonderful ideas.  I've enjoyed reading your blogs.  I wish you all the best and hope you got as much from this class as I did!

One month after my death by spider incident...

Well, I've been furiously building in both OpenSim and Minecraft.  I've been very, very pleased with my ever increasing building ability.  My only frustration currently, is that I had figured out how to put a script into my driver's ed car for our last presentation only to not be able to find that script for several things I need to do in this Campfire in Cyberspace build.  I even opened my car build up, and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to view the script.  What on earth?

I have also learned how to manage my time better with an active toddler keeping me busy, and I have found collaboration on our final project to be exceptional.  If this is how professionals collaborate outside of school, I am no longer intimidated and I look forward to collaborative efforts in the future.  We each had strengths and weaknesses coming into the final project, yet together, we have been able to achieve something amazing.  I do not have the experience drafting papers and lesson plans like my other teammates do, and their work is so much richer than anything I could have done.  In turn, I have really found an area that I am blossoming in and that allows my creative side to pour out into an educational arena.  They both initially seemed hesitant to in their building ability, but have jumped right into the vision of our space, and have added greatly to it!  We could not have achieved this alone in this timeframe, and our excitement about the project has continued to grow.

What I was up to in November

Well, I got so busy trying to build, draft, write, collaborate, google-hangout, and read, that I completely forgot to fill you in for an entire month.

Early November:

I experimented in survival mode, built a house with windows, mined until I died several times, planted some food, and killed a lot of things.

Creative mode-turned on:  I watched a TON of YouTube videos on making Note boxes.  It's pretty cool; you can change them to make different sounds (drums, piano, etc.).  You power them with red stone, so it's pretty difficult to make this stuff if I didn't have it readily accessible.

Mine Craft project: I created a short music lesson on theory and ear training.  Students had the ability to quiz each other and create intervals.  The lesson could be expanded and developed for an entire semester of aural skills.  My son's teenage babysitter saw me working on it and gave me some great tips.  She was super excited about it and asked if she could take the class.  It gave me confidence that this could be used for younger students, as well.

Mid-Nov:

Our team was set; Ed, Nancy, and I decided to collaborate on a STEAM lesson.  I was so happy to include the Arts, and was worried that I wouldn't find an area I could contribute to successfully.

We had so many wonderful ideas, and these could all be turned into a semester's worth of lessons.  We had several meetings to hash out the ideas and get creating.  One thing that seemed to help was to start building once we had an idea of the direction we were heading (thanks to classmate feedback), and we were able to walk through the space and then talk about ideas.  Then, build, talk, collaborate, build, talk, write, etc.  It was an excellent process!

Late-Nov:

Building is in full force.  The excitement level of our team continued to grow as we saw our ideas come to life in a virtual space.  It's so fascinating that we can get feedback, as well, while we are moving through the space.

Death by Spider

Back in world, it was time to replenish my supplies. I left the safety of my cabin and took my rickity boat down the canal behind my homestead. My navigational skills proved lacking as I lost my boat to a hole of my own device. Swimming to the nearest shoreline, I quickly gathered mushrooms, collected some wood, and found a spot for mining coal. I had none, and it was getting dark. Unfortunately, I didn’t gather it quickly enough. The she-demon, all spindly, eight-legged, and venomous, preyed upon me while my back was turned. I fought valiantly, but my tools and skills were no match for my foe. I died; there was no one to weep for me. Reincarnated, I traveled home, collected my belongings and better prepared for future adventures.

Minecrafting for Two Classes

A Loss of Motivation

This past week, I spent a ton of time in Minecraft.  I mined a bunch of things and spent about five hours crafting and building.  I was very proud of myself, and felt prepared.  Then, in class, all of our inventory was erased.  It's not like I can't remake it, and it's not like I lost anything real.  But I did lose the hours I put into being prepared.  It's interesting to me, because it's made me not want to have to repeat all of the things I had previously done, and I haven't wanted to go back in world.  I haven't been in Minecraft since class on Wednesday.  I'll pop in tonight to fight off monsters and hope to collect some items.  Perhaps my motivation will come back then, but it's interesting how losing things that I created, even virtually, caused an emotional reaction.  Probably all for the best, or I would've been sucked in and not spent the time I needed to somewhere else.  More thoughts to come after re-entering Minecraft tonight.

Why Practice is Important: Getting Lost, Catching Fire, and a Crafting Table Discover in MinecraftEDu

I spent three hours in MinecraftEDU last night.  Wow...it's very, very different from any other video game that I've played in the past.  Here are my initial "quick-thoughts" and list of things I discovered:

1. It is easy to lose your way.  
2. You have to actually hold your mouse down to repeatedly hit in order to break things.
3. ASWD is great for moving; I absolutely hate, hate, hate that my mouse moves the camera angle.
4. You can get lost underground.  It's also pretty dark down there.
5. When digging, it might be a good idea to make sure you can get out of the hole...
6. F5 changes your viewpoint.  I can't decide if I like 1st person or not.
7. Did I mention that it was really easy to get lost?????
8. There are random villages with people...huh, wasn't expecting that one!
9. Experimenting with the building grid lets me make all sorts of usual things.
 
10.  If you step in lava, you will light on fire.  If you throw a pig into lava, it will disappear.

11. I got lost a lot.
12. Having a husband who plays lots of Minecraft is helpful for cool ideas about how to mark your spot so you can find it again.   Too bad that husband wasn't around the first two hours of game-time.
13.  Squids are in the water and if you poke them with a stick, they will give you ink.
14.  Apples and seeds can come out of trees, it's not just wood.
15.  Apparently, there are train tracks under the ground...and spider webs...and bats.  What?!
16.  If you aren't careful, you can break the barrier keeping the lava contained, and have it spill into things.
17.  Climbing to the top of trees is very useful to look at the scenery, and try to figure out where you are!!!  Unfortunately, I was still lost...
18.  Sticks can break things.  Putting random planks of wood together made a crafting table.  I'm assuming I can build much more elaborate things in that.
19.  In retrospect, when you are lost, maybe don't spend an hour trying to find your special plot of land again.
20. This is going to be pretty fun after I get a better handle on the program!

More Minecraft thoughts to come.  It's tempting to do a lot of play in here, but I need to get back to all the other projects coming up for my other classes at the moment...I'll just have to reward myself with it later when I check things off my assignments list.