Minecraft Day 4 - 20 June

This was a very productive and peaceful session. There were no problems with anything. I had some requests to allow some enchanting or potions to allow students to build faster, and that was fine. They are all realising the importance of looking after each other's work and working together. They also realise we only have three more sessions in which to finish this project. I suggested we didn't waste time visiting each other's areas, but would look around towards the end of the session - unfortunately I forgot to do this, but time is so short it didn't really matter. We still have the car park and food court area to build, and more signage. These will be jobs for those who finish their area of the theme park.

DOXINWHAT was away today, and was certainly missed by his team who were looking for guidance from him in building their Marmite jar. Luckily for me there were no technical issues and I managed on my own. CHIPMAN's place was filled by Ladder56 and that team made good progress today and seemed happy and completely focused. I enjoyed the ride on their rollercoaster, as you'll see in the video! Being a newbie to Minecraft, this was my first ever Minecraft roller coaster ride and I felt the thrill of that. I felt genuine anxiety about getting lost in their maze, too. Which goes to show just how real these Minecraft worlds can seem!

I'm impressed by the desire of the students (completely unprompted from me) to want to provide items like donation boxes for Cure Kids by the entrance to their area. Everyone was willingly 'throwing' help across the table to whoever requested it - there didn't seem to be any need to use the chat area for communication.

I wanted some written updates in the students' words for the blog from today's session, but I felt it was a big ask when time is so short. Two teams will email me an update or post directly to the blog themselves from home. The other two had a team member dictate their updates for me to type - these are completely in their own words and you can read their updates here on this blog.

It's amazing how these students can concentrate so completely for the full hour and a half without a break. No one was at a loose end, they were all busy building collaboratively, sharing out the roles.

Any parents who are interested to see what they're doing are welcome to pop down to the Conference Room at school between 12:45 pm and 1:45 pm on a Thursday.