Responding to an invitation from Kim Harrison I got up this morning at 5 a.m.

Responding to an invitation from Kim Harrison I got up this morning at 5 a.m. my time to attend the VSTE VE PLN meeting I announced on #learning2gether here http://learning2gether.pbworks.com/w/page/32206114/volunteersneeded#TueApr100030UTCVSTEVEPLNmeetingonlessonideasforusingMinecraftinschoolsettings. I came in on the tail end of a tour of a display of builds illustrating "lesson ideas for using Minecraft in school settings." I flew around and took some screenshots. If you can get on the VSTE Minecraft Server, you can /warp schoolwork to find the display. Personally I want to go back and try the railroad which appears similar to something Mircea Patrascu once built for us in #evomc15

Greetings all, it's the last week of EVO.

Greetings all, it's the last week of EVO. And #evomc18 is in its 5th week. And evomc#18 is a continuation of #evomc15, 16, and 17, and there may very well be an #evomc19, so it's not the end of EVO Minecraft MOOC, as long as there is a server running to play on, which there continues to be thanks to Aaron Schwartz and Jeff Kuhn.

As MOOCs go, this last week's stage is the focus one. As dave cormier says, in MOOCs people orient, make themselves known to others (declare), network, cluster (as one or two dozen of us have done in these last few weeks), and a good example of focus is Don Carroll and Jane Chien's research project, which might have a life of its own after evomc18, and also my offer to you to consider publishing your reflections on using Minecraft in your workplace in TESL-EJ if you would like to write them up. So all in all a successful MOOC again this year.

If you want to see how we envisage this last week of EVOMC18, you can see our missions wiki here, http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/121439046/2018_week5

There you see you can (1) continue to interact in Minecraft, (2) still get help if you need it just by asking us, (3) work toward your Survivor's Badge if you wish, and (4) fill out the EVO survey of all EVO sessions, including this one, here https://goo.gl/forms/4sIrBRcgeDZA4DpD3. (Please)

Our live events this time around have mainly been in-world ones, and you can find us in world by filling in the Doodle polls you find here:
http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/121439859/2018_Live_Events

If you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, or reports of outstanding success just leave us a post, or reply here.
http://missions4evomc.pbworks.com/w/page/121439046/2018_week5

Great EVO Closing webcast sessions!

Great EVO Closing webcast sessions! I really enjoyed moderating #EVOMC15 , maybe wasn't able to help as I wanted to, but I promise I will keep learning and sharing with you especially with the help of my two boys! :) Thank you Vance Stevens for inviting Filip Smolčec and me, thx Jeff Kuhn for being patient with us. I have learned a lot from all of you. Thanks to all partipants and moderators.  :) Greetings from Croatia!

Hi all, with #evosessions for 2015 coming to a close, your EVO Minecraft moderators Jeff, Vance, Bobbi, Filip,...

Hi all, with #evosessions for 2015 coming to a close, your EVO Minecraft moderators Jeff, Vance, Bobbi, Filip, Marijana, and David hope you enjoyed and benefited from #evomc15 . We would like to invite you now to complete the course as follows: 

(1) You are especially invited to join us at the #evo15 closing ceremony Sunday Feb 15, as listed as our final event for this session https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cr3i8u08omjagth45dss5jp7euk?authkey=CO_M5eq6oeWH8gE. All #EVOsessions will be represented, and each will have approximately 10 minutes to step forward and speak about how wonderful their experience was. It would be great if you can be present and lend your voice to the recording. The event starts at 1400 GMT and takes place in Bb Collaborate (Elluminate) http://learningtimesevents.org/webheads/.

We can have a #evomc15 Skype and/or http://chatwing.com/vancestev
back-channel to coordinator our effort on the day.

(2) Please respond to the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JBHVKT8
this is a survey which all participants in EVO are requested to complete. The results go into a report presented at the TESOL conference each year, this year in Toronto.

(3) You can claim your badge. Instructions are here http://tinyurl.com/evomc15-syllabus and here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bIrwrRqYdTjFTXbX7ZUrjQhwi6GZgJvYCMmzsbm7DJ8/edit?usp=sharing
The latter link serves as evidence of your accomplishment; that is, it is a publicly viewable record of LINKS to your missions. The requirements for a badge are to show evidence of 5 of ten possible missions accomplished. 

To get a badge you need to JOIN that space (see http://screencast.com/t/7LHU8UF7X5) and enter your accomplishments with verification links where possible (in other words, if you introduced yourself to our Google+ community, find a 
link to that post like this http://screencast.com/t/tMYgz0LYl and link the cell where you indicate YES to that URL). 

You will see when you receive your badge (from Credly) that your badge will link back to the public record of your missions accomplished. One more thing, if you want a badge, please enter your details in the spreadsheet before March 1 (we'll stop checking after that).

(4) Keep in touch via our Google+ community. I personally have learned a lot about Minecraft I didn't know before (like how to DO it for example) and I want to learn more. I have enjoyed this so much that I have decided to propose this session for EVO again next year. I will ask the existing slate of moderators to re-enlist (and if others would like to help out, let us know). So this community will hopefully remain active, and we'll reform next year in the same Google+ space.

So this is not goodbye, but a mOOC (a miniscule open online course) is a course with a beginning and end, and #EVOMC15 ends tomorrow Feb 15. But continue to use the tag and feel free to continue to post in this space. Looking forward to ongoing interaction with all of you - Vance
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cr3i8u08omjagth45dss5jp7euk?authkey=CO_M5eq6oeWH8gE

Great God! This is an awful place - Scott's Last Expedition, Journal, 17 January 1912

Great God! This is an awful place - Scott's Last Expedition, Journal, 17 January 1912

Dear colleagues,
It has been a wonderful experience working with all of you over the last five weeks. However this correspondence may indeed be my last. I have, quite literally, dug myself into a hole. A rather large one. I can no longer judge the passage of time but I have wandered for what seems to be days with no end to this cavernous void. My supply of chickens is still quite robust however sticks with which to build pick axes runs perilously thin. Should I not see daylight again, please tell the world my story and carry on all that we have achieved in this unforgiving and blocky world.

-Jeff
#evomc15

Hi folks, week 5, we're winding down here.

Hi folks, week 5, we're winding down here. Sorry for the silence, but last weekend we got together on Friday on the sandbox server. On Sunday Jeff Kuhn and I presented on #evomc15 , archived at 
http://learning2gether.net/2015/02/08/evo-minecraft-mooc-at-the-free-live-connecting-online-co15-conference/

Tomorrow, we have a meeting with Jeff at 1300-1500 GMT where some of us are determined to come away with a working server 
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c5qv1bj2gg9jicp7bl30o51eo68?authkey=CLHZ36iDr7imvAE

And we are awarding badges. In order to receive a badge you need to provide evidence of at least 5 missions accomplished.
Visit http://tinyurl.com/evomc15-badgetrack and fill in details with links or dates of your evidence. 

More on all of this when I get a moment (non-virtual life is a bane of all our existences)
http://learning2gether.net/2015/02/08/evo-minecraft-mooc-at-the-free-live-connecting-online-co15-conference

Would you be willing to answer 5 quick questions in a poll created by Nina Liakos, head coordinator of EVO?

Would you be willing to answer 5 quick questions in a poll created by Nina Liakos, head coordinator of EVO? It's here https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JBHVKT8 and its purpose is to get feedback regarding #EVOMC15 for a report Nina needs to make at TESOL in Toronto, and she needs these questions answered by as many EVO participants as possible. If you're in other #EVOsessions, you'll be getting polled in those sessions as well. This is just for Minecraft MOOC.

Sun Feb 1 1400 GMT #Learnng2gether with EVO Minecraft MOOC: Modifying the game for language learning with Dave...

Sun Feb 1 1400 GMT #Learnng2gether with EVO Minecraft MOOC: Modifying the game for language learning with Dave Dodgson, Jeff Kuhn, and EVOMC15 co-moderators, https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/ckmi5bcs2572sa408vef64oa500 
 
Dave Dodgson  will outline what his students at his former school were doing with Minecraft and what he's been doing at his current school. He has a few videos his former students made on Youtube which he will also share. And now that the #EVOMC15 particpants have tested the Minecraft waters Jeff will lead a session on modifications for the game (nothing too technical) so folks can get a glimpse into how Minecraft can really be tweaked for specific learning content.
 
We'll meet in Hangout on Air, stream on http://webheadsinaction.org/live for an hour, share Minecraft screens, and then move to world post-show. All are welcome. More information at http://tinyurl.com/learning2gether
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/ckmi5bcs2572sa408vef64oa500

Greetings fellow gamers.

Greetings fellow gamers. I discovered today that we can create groups in Canvas MC MOOC and so I created an #evomc15  group there.  This link will only work if you are logged on to the canvas course, but once in Canvas you click here to find groups https://learn.canvas.net/courses/433/groups. Then JOIN our group within canvas.
https://learn.canvas.net/courses/433/groups

Our Week 2 Minecraft meet up went great. However the server seems to have a rodent problem :)

Our Week 2 Minecraft meet up went great. However the server seems to have a rodent problem :)
If more folks are interested in MC meet ups maybe we can look toward parsing out into regions. Anyone interested in EST times? I know Kelly had mention it, anyone else?
#evomc15

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

Hi everyone, week 1 went beyond many of our expectations, and now we are starting week 2 of #evomc15.

Hi everyone, week 1 went beyond many of our expectations, and now we are starting week 2 of #evomc15. In the Dave Cormier scheme of things (on how to cope with MOOCs) we are past the ORIENT stage and into DECLARE for week 2, which is where people start fitting in and expressing that fit through blog posts and  YouTube recordings. For many of us this has been a natural progression, with many blogs having emerged already in Week 1.

One way to DECLARE is to to TAG your posts #evomc15. You can make sure we find your posts by tweeting their existence using that hash tag. Then we will find them on our tagboard (try and get your posts to appear there, at
https://tagboard.com/evomc15/search)

I have updated our word document to include Week 2 here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yRbAzdndRFncpckurKLf5s2b95Z1-Tksclmw1A8Jq7Y/edit. Anyone registered user of that doc can add content there if they wish.

For now we can consolidate what we started in Week 1. We will set up a series of regular server sandbox meetings; Jeff has tentatively agreed to be available Fridays at about the same time as last week, but we will try to find additional times.  On Jan 25 1400 GMT Marijana and Filip Smolčec will host our Sunday show (with me and others who may be free at that time). We will schedule EVENTS for this community to put our meetups in our calendar.

If you are planning to join the Canvas Minecraft for Educators MOOC it starts Jan 26 and you'll need to enroll. It could give us additional perspective.

We have already shared phenomenal perspectives on our topic amongst ourselves and we look forward to more in the weeks to come. Your moderators will put forward a program for development based on what we've learned so far, or perhaps the "community as curriculum" will move us forward in the direction participants decide collectively.

It's all part of the game. Congratulations for having survived Week 1. Day dawns now on Week 2.
https://tagboard.com/evomc15/search

My first post

My first post 

http://rbie.blogspot.hu/2015/01/minecraft-in-my-lessons-before-course.html

#evomc15

Hi, in the sandbox world I made a trap (I learned it on Thursday evening from my 5th grader 1-2-1 student who'd...

Hi, in the sandbox world I made a trap (I learned it on Thursday evening from my 5th  grader 1-2-1 student who'd read about it in the Redstone Handbook, it was a lava trap, I slightly changed it).
Should you get trapped, here is a tutorial on how to get out. 
Sometimes the trap doesn't work, I don't know why ... Filip Smolčec  might be able to explain :D 
#evomc15  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRnv2lK81KE

My #evomc15 introduction at last.

My #evomc15  introduction  at last.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeDzsLIGwC8

Carol Rainbow first time riding a horse #Minecraft #evomc15 :) way to go!

Carol Rainbow first time riding a horse #Minecraft  #evomc15 :) way to go!

A few hours ago this was largely empty but after a server party it is looking pretty good.

A few hours ago this was largely empty but after a server party it is looking pretty good. Awesome job everyone. FYI...the end of course test only has one question: How do you tame a horse? :)
#evomc15

If you are keen on playing survival mode in Minecraft, maybe this short video tutorial on "How to survive the first...

If you are keen on playing survival mode in Minecraft, maybe this short video tutorial on "How to survive the first night in Minecraft" by Filip Smolčec created 2 years ago (then age 9) will help you. I wanted to post it after Jeff Kuhn great introductory video to #minecraft and Vance Stevens asking for help :) P.S. Filip's English has rapidly improved since then. Carol Rainbow, if you have time check the video! #evomc15  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ov4zqysrUs

A neat article about kids using Minecraft.

A neat article about kids using Minecraft.
This comes via Donelle Batty - an excellent Minecraft teacher.
https://plus.google.com/118006465829518367548/posts/LRihKX2NEZB
#evomc15

How tagging works: Tagboard shows us Google+ and Twitter posts tagged #evomc15

How tagging works: Tagboard shows us Google+ and Twitter posts tagged #evomc15 . Shelly Sanchez Terrell just sent a tweet with this tag and the short link lands us on Tamas Lorincz's blog post http://tamasonline.com/index.php/2015/01/13/minecraft-evo-journal/. I'm about to retweet that one :-)