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A big thank you to the grade 5-7s who participated trying out having a Minecraft play sessions at our school, and also to the school administers for allowing me to contact the parents and run the test sessions on such short notice for some mini-action research purposes. These individuals received a last minute private invite under a week's notice through an email sent to their parents for permission to attend. Our sessions ran from 3:15-4:15 PM after school. In order to fully participate in the club activities, the students were required to have their own Minecraft account (Java version) and were requested in bringing their own laptop device from home to play on.
Ideally I would have wanted the children the ease and access in using the school laptops. Our school has Chromebook cart stations for teachers to book for their Computer blocks. However, after doing some research I quickly found out that Chromebooks are not compatible and able to download the Minecraft program. Our school middle school campus has Windows computers, so that could be a possible potential technological trial to look into using for the future.
Our intended goals during our meeting time:
test joining the Realm server subscribed and purchased by Ms. Chu
fill out ideas and thoughts on chart paper for running a Minecraft club.
What worked well and what didn't
I'm going to start off with what didn't go so well. First of all, the students were not able to connect to the Realm server due to the school wi-fi network restrictions. The students also thought of trying to connect together in the same game through LAN (Local Area Network) play. Again, we were all receiving the same connection error.
Although the first session did not turn out as what I was hoping it to be, the students were quite enthusiastic to see the other peers who received private invites to the play sessions. I discussed with my school administers that I didn't want to announce or make any solid promises yet about starting up a Minecraft club at the school until the logistics and planning for the after-school program was more solidified. I was suggested to mention in the email to the parents to inform their child to not make mention of the Minecraft play sessions to their classmates. The kids were also excited to hop on their computers and share through showing their laptop screens of their Single Player mode worlds. They were actively engaged in talking about the recent patch changes to the game, and discussing tips and tricks they wanted to show one another. There was a shared passion that brought the kids together despite the age and grade differences.
As the kids were waiting for their game to load, or near the end of the play session, they were requested to fill out some of their thoughts for developing a Minecraft club at the school.
On two different chart papers, the students jotted down ideas on the following topics:
their cooperative building projects and game ideas they could do with fellow club members
predict potential peer relationship problems that could occur in running a Minecraft club
The students shared their Minecraft game names and were informed they could join onto the online Realm server from home to play together. We went over some general guidelines to remain respectful to others as they would in real-life, and that the server would be closed at 9:00 PM. The kids were thrilled and were swift to head on home.
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