Gingarenposhireikan



Paul Laubach and Shunji IwasakiMinecraft Group Building ActivityLearning Ojectives: Following directions and learning to work as a group using English.Materials: Computer lab, Minecraft subscription, and host own world serverDuration: Over the course of a weekClass size: 15Age, Location, and Level of Students: High-intermediate, junior level college students in JapanDirections for Teacher:1. Students will be given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Minecraft (game controls, etc.) for about half a class period. 2. Students will be organized into groups of three or four (depending on class size.3. Students are then given instructions. 4. Each student is given a detailed explanation of a house that they need to build. Students must work together to construct the house. Students also need to work together (that way they don’t gather too much or too little or take too much time to do so) to gather materials from the surrounding world.There are also directions to hidden stashes (3 total) of harder to find building materials. These stashes are located at various places in the Minecraft world. Each of the students is given directions to a stash for which they are responsible for fetching. They will pick the directions out of a box to avoid any conflict of interest.5. The teacher will take on a passive role (mainly observe) and only intervene if should a question arise and make sure that students are communicating only in English. As the teacher you have the power to monitor the students in game using your avatar. 6. This project should take about a week to complete Assesment: To assess this activity each group’s house should be inspected to see how accurately the directions were followed. All communication during game play was recorded and points should be deducted for use of the native language. Grades are based on group effort. Rationale:This activity is highly interactive which requires the students to use all of their acquired skills in the English language to complete the assignment. All communication will be conducted using English. Some of the tasks involve assigning roles to each player (or work together on everything), coordination of actions, gathering necessary materials, resolving any social issues that might arise (especially interesting), and much more. Minecraft provides students with real-life scenarios that would be impossible to conduct in the real world. According to Zachary Hausrath “While not explicitly designed to teach language, the game inherently fosters collaboration and creativity among players and, for this reason, has begun to see press in educational settings.” (Hausrath, 2012).In addition, each group serves as an individual community within a larger community (the class as a whole) and there is a sense of competition between communities that further deepens the sense of belonging and identity. This heightened sense of community has been shown to raise affective learning (Blattner & Fiori, 2009). Also the use of an avatar might help shy students (who might be adept at gaming and want to show their skills) to contribute more to the project and most importantly to produce more of the target language.Student Instructions:Your spaceship crashed and you are stranded on a strange but beautiful Earth-like planet. You need to survive by building a house for protection while you are waiting to be rescued. Luckily, another spaceship was able to drop supplies down to the surface and sent you directions to them. There is a lot of work to be done and adventure to be had. You must decide who does what and coordinate your efforts to be successful. Good luck! The House:1. Find or clear a flat area and dig a hole that is 10 bocks wide and 14 blocks long. Place stone along the edge of the hole. This is your foundation! 2. You will have wooden floors. Fill up the rest of the hole with wooden planks.3. Pick either 10 block wide side to be the front of the house. Build a doorway using stone. There should be two 3 block high columns separated by one block. then place a block between the highest blocks. This is your doorway! If you found the door already, put it in the frame. 4. Next we need wood from trees to build the walls. Make 4 block high walls around the house with one window on the front side and back side. Also put two windows on the long sides of the house. You can decide how big you want your windows. There is plenty of glass! 5. Now we can build the ceiling. Place wooden planks on the sides of the highest block (4th highest) until you have a full ceiling. In the front of the house, on the wood next to the stone doorway, make a one block hole in the ceiling. Put ladders all the way up through the hole. Now you work on the second floor!6. Climb the ladder to the second floor. Start by building the wall. Place a one block high wall all around the second floor. At each corner place three more blocks on top of each other. Next, connect each corner column to each other. There should be holes for very long windows. Fill the holes with glass. This is your lookout tower and bedroom with a view! Finish by making a ceiling out of wooden planks. 7. Design your own roof! Whichever group makes the most interesting roof wins a prize! 8. On the second floor there should be three double beds and a bookshelf near each bed. An opposite sides of the house there should be a stone block with a torch on top each one. 9. On the first floor, near the ladder build a sofa that is four blocks long using the white sofa block. At the ends of the sofa there should be a bookshelf. There is also a cooking area with two ovens and a gray table in the back right corner. Place a chest at the front left corner of the house. Place another chest on the left wall just to the right of the window. Place two torches on each wall. 10. Go outside and build a 5 block long wooden (same material as the walls) roof to cover the entrance. Then place three torches on the top three stone blocks of the doorway. Congratulations, you now have a house! But we aren’t finished yet!11. We need to eat! We must make a garden. On the left side of the house dig a hole one block deep, 4 blocks wide and 6 blocks long. Then place a row of dirt blocks along the right side of the hole. Now place two rows of dirt blocks on the left side of the hole. In between we will have an irrigation ditch with water. 12. Now we need to plant. There are delicious, colorful flowers in one of the supply boxes you found. Plan them in the garden. The left row should be yellow flowers, the row next to that should be blue then water and finally a row of yellow flowers. 14. Build a fence around the garden to keep out hungry critters.13. Make a stone path to your garden from the front entrance.15. Congratulations! You now have a house to live in until you get rescued. If you still have time add something unique to your house. Directions to supplies:Supply box 1: From the starting point turn left and head for the tall mountain. Climb the mountain and you will see a water fall across the valley. Go to the waterfall. The package should have landed somewhere near the waterfall. Supply box 2: From the starting point make a left turn and walk straight through forest until you arrive at a desert. Turn right and follow the edge of the sand until you come to a lake. The supplies are at the bottom of the lake. Good luck!! Supply box 3: Go straight from the starting point and you will soon be in a valley. Follow the bottom of the valley until you see a waterfall and lava. Near the bottom of the lava flow there is a cave! Go into the cave and follow it until you find the supply box. Some kind of animal or creature must have hid it in the cave. Be careful!!! ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download