Collaborative building

Whenever people have to work in the same space there are bound to be conflicts. These conflicts aren’t bad in themselves, they are actually healthy, normal responses. Of course, how we behave during conflicts is the important skill. We can’t develop skills we don’t practice so there’s little choice but to have regular opportunities to exercise our collaborative skills.

Students started building their shared treehouses last year, however, my laptop has since died and I was unable to preserve that world so we have to start again. It’s a good opportunity since classes have changed since then so we’ll make the best of it. During periods of social isolation it’s even more imperative that students get together and interact even if only online. It’s safe and legal.

For this activity to work students need to be online at approximately the same time. Normally I would teach 3A in the morning at 10.05am and 3E after lunch at 1.50pm. We will attempt to connect to a server at my home that will only be available during those times for 1 hour. I ran a test today with about 16 year 5 students and it worked nicely. If enough students cannot make those times then I can run another session at 4pm.

The objective of the lesson is to work together with others to build lots of inter-connected tree-houses. There are rules that all students should be following which I’ve put on a board:

Be creative, but follow the rules so we can all enjoy ourselves.

I consider these common sense, socially and environmentally responsible rules. Students are pretty good at recognising when they or others are doing the wrong thing.

Several year 5 students had technical issues today which are difficult to resolve without being able to see what they are doing. Students should make sure they can login and know how to use all the Minecraft controls before they start the session. There’s nothing like frustration to trigger anti-social behaviour.

I will be emailing all parents the details on how to connect to the shared server.

6 Comments

  1. Keyvas Ng

    Hi Mr Ong, Did I missed this? I have IT subject at 2:45. and the note above is at 1:50pm, I noticed that last week also the timetable is not matching.

    Reply
    • admin

      No, that was for week 1. There was no group session in week 2

      Reply
      • Keyvas Ng

        Thanks

        Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Hi Mr Ong , We haven’t received the instruction , tried to login with information given last week IP/port but it doesn’t work
    Thanks

    Reply
    • admin

      Hi, I’ve sent an email to all y3 parents regarding this.

      Reply
  3. calamus

    i couldn`t also.

    Reply

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