Hi all.

Hi all.  I wasn't able to attend the first meet and greet or first play time, but I am quite interested in this MOOC.  In case you don't know me, I'm Aaron Schwartz, the current chair of TESOL's CALL-IS.  I've also (probably thanks to Jeff Kuhn ) been playing Minecraft for 2 years now...and first in single-player, but after a while I started playing on multiplayer servers.

I got a chance to watch the recording of last week's hangout and was happy to see how so many people around the world are approaching gaming in education was particularly excited to hear some of the stories about children's motivation and agency due to their experiences with the game.

Like Jeff, I teach college students and I do think that most of them perceive Minecraft as something for younger kids.  However, last semester, I taught a CALL course for future language teachers and found that one student was an avid player and we did a mini-lesson involving the game.  It was mostly chaotic but the students saw the potential of the game and many wrote about it in their later assignments.

I'm interested in how the game and the server can be modified for education and community building and I have been playing around with various modpacks for the game.  My favorite is called computercraft (http://computercraft.info), a plugin that actually puts programmable computers into the game.  Players can actually write programs in the game (or download programs that have been shared online) and use moving computers (called Turtles -- anyone remember Logo?) effectively as robots to manipulate the virtual environment of the game.

I've learned a lot about the game in the last two years, including redstone circuitry (basically in-game electricity), hidden levels, and (as mentioned above), working with plugins.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.   #evomc15  
http://computercraft.info