As I am planning for the TESOL conference, I re-visited the WordPress page that Mircea Patrascu has backed up for...

As I am planning for the TESOL conference, I re-visited the WordPress page that Mircea Patrascu has backed up for our group. Thank you so much, Mircea! I hope we transfer this year's posts there as well. I can help after I get back to Taipei on the 18th. I like Vance's post "Keep calm. It's almost time to say goodbye," but I'm not ready to say goodbye to our G+ community! https://evomc143864209.wordpress.com/
https://evomc143864209.wordpress.com/

Thanks Mircea Patrascu for giving us a group lesson on how to use scriptcraft in Minecraft to build castles,...

Thanks Mircea Patrascu for giving us a group lesson on how to use scriptcraft in Minecraft to build castles, bridges, stairs, and blocks. While Emanual immediately built a house with codes, Mattie Tsai was creating chaos creating outpours of lava using codes. I suffered "intentionally accidental" (as Dak put it) deaths because of Mattie. Vlad, Mircea's son came to the rescue and teleported me back several times when I respawned. We look forward to Mircea's next coding lesson! ^___^

Want to join my team?

Want to join my team? Dakotah Redstone and OliveTree Lighthouse have been testing out scoreboards in Minecraft. I was so excited to be on Dak's team when I saw my name on the scoreboard. I feel like I'm one of the "OASIS players" from the movie/book "Ready Player One." Let the game begin! When I collect beats and potatoes, the scoreboard shows how many I collected. This is a lot of fun!!

Mattie Tsai gives a big heart to Dak and Olive. Happy Valentine's day!

Mattie Tsai gives a big heart to Dak and Olive. Happy Valentine's day!

Thank you, Kim Harrison for inviting us on the East Coast Miners server.

Thank you, Kim Harrison for inviting us on the East Coast Miners server. Treasure hunting was a lot of fun! The coral reef and tropical fish are so beautiful! I think that kids can learn far more by collaborating and communicating with players in Minecraft than they can by taking online synchronous language lessons (Online language tutoring/learning has been a trend lately). I see a lot of creativity, problem-solving, and peer-teaching with patience in Minecraft. I was taught by Cats, a teenage east coast miner, how to fly. She gave me lots of tips and feedback to my repeated failing attempts, and with her help, I re-learned how to fly in survival mode in Minecraft!

===Info on East Coast Miners from the website: http://www.eastcoastminers.org/====
The East Coast Miners Minecraft Community is operated by two educators and one geek (engineer) in the hopes to enrich STEAM skills science, technology, engineering, art and math as well as communication and collaboration skills.

Thank you for all the wonderful and constructive feedback!

Thank you for all the wonderful and constructive feedback! It was really good to be able to run a lesson, get feedback and reflect upon it. There's a lot to discuss here but I'll start with analyzing in-game L2 learner interaction. I noticed there wasn’t much discussion going on during resources gathering because Mattie and Emanual spread out the work. Mattie asked Emanual to get wood and he told Emanual we was going to mine.

They had more interaction during collaborative building. Basically, Mattie came up with the idea on the fly. He asked emanual to look at Dak’s pig and suggested that they copy Dak’s build. Later they modified it, built a body, a tail, and four legs with hooves, two on each side as if being served on a silver platter.

M: Emanual, I have an idea?
E: What is it?
M:Just look, that’s a pig over there!
E:I know that.
M: Wait. Oh my God. One, two, three, four….
M: Emanual, just look at the pig thing.
E: I thought we’re making a full sized pig.
E: We’ve got 10 minutes to build that pig.
M: I’m gonna go count the blocks, okay?
E: Okay.

He went to Dak’s pig and started counting the blocks. Emanual stayed at their Blue Team building area and followed Mattie’s instructions “Nine on the very bottom...one straight line.” Emanual confirmed what he did “A line of nine blocks.”

M: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. (Counted again)
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Nine on the very bottom. Destroy every block.
One straight line.
E:One, two, three, four, five, six, seve, eight, nine. A line of nine blocks.
M: One two three four five. Destroy four blocks.
E: Destroying four blocks.
M: I have an idea…
E: Done…

During the building process, both Mattie and Emanual constantly evaluated their build, making sure it looked right. Emanual would question their build: “Are you sure this is how it looks like? Doesn’t look very good!” Mattie would fix it. Then Emanual suggested “It needs one touch to it.” Mattie responded that he noticed they needed coal blocks for the final touch.

M: Okay, we need something dark.
E: Are you sure this is how it looks like? Doesn’t look very good. There we go!
M: Because you started building!
E: Okay, let’s just go! Go! Go! Make some more things!
E: We’re making the pig face up there.
M: duh, duh, duh…(singing)
E: That looks good!

M: Oh, no, I forgot.
E: That looks good! It needs one touch to it.
M: Yes, I noticed that we need something very important. We need coal block.
E: Mattie, Mattie, be fast!
M: We need three coal blocks.
E: I’m gonna get coal.
M: What are you doing.
E: You’ve already got coal?
M: Yes.
E: We’re doing pretty good Mattie?
Anybody like our pig? We’re making the face up there!


As an EFL learner, Mattie does not have much chance to converse in English in Taiwan. The speaking activities held in class at school are mainly role play or skit based on the dialogues in the textbook. Students are encouraged to come up with different endings to the dialogue or skit, but these activities are designed for more controlled practice. It is true that Mattie's learned of lot from watching Youtubers play minecraft and reading books about Minecraft, and I believe these helped tremendously in building his listening/reading comprehension and receptive language skills. Speaking English to communicate ideas was very difficult for him at the beginning. Although he understood a lot of the contents of those YouTube videos when he was seven, he was not able to converse effortlessly during his first year in EVO 2017. Therefore, this is why I valued Minecraft as a world that kids can connect with one another. This would be a debate on whether there should be pushed output or what role does Merrill Swain's "Comprehensive Output" Hypothesis play in second language acquisition. Swain proposed that CO facilitates second language learning in ways that differ from and enhance input due to the mental processes connected with the production of language.... to be continued.

See you in 15 minutes! =)

See you in 15 minutes! =)

"Building Challenge" on Sunday 1/27 14:00 UTC

"Building Challenge" on Sunday 1/27 14:00 UTC

Rose Bard, Dakotah Redstone, and I are hosting a building challenge. This is an activity designed for beginning English language learners. Please join us for a test run and we welcome your input afterwards.

Place: EVOMC19 Server, we'll meet at /warp 14k
Time: Sunday 1/27 14:00 UTC

LIVE EVENT on the Aquatic Server

LIVE EVENT on the Aquatic Server

Greetings! We can't wait to meet everyone in-world! Dakotah gave me a tour inside a big creeper structure he built. We had a lot of fun testing it out!! He's planning to host the "Share the Love" event tomorrow. Here's some more information:

"Share the Love" will be held on Monday, 14 January 2019, 13:00 UTC
This event will take place using Minecraft version 1.13, hosted on the "Aquatic" server 192.99.201.17:25571

About “Share the Love" - lessons in seeing things differently, or "Why dying's not so bad after all". We'll talk about the meaning behind the event during or after we finish it, according to the preferences of the participants. NOTE: this event will take place using Minecraft version 1.13, hosted on the "Aquatic" server... If you would be interested in attending, please let us know if you need some assistance in getting more familiar/comfortable prior to the event.

Here are places we can visit on the 29th for the webinar.

Here are places we can visit on the 29th for the webinar. Vance took me on a ride down the river and we got to the magnificent BIG FIRE! It was BEAUTIFUL! You'd have to see for yourself! We also visited Polar Bear Viewing Site, the campfire, and the Green Tower. Mircea showed Aaron and me the monument that he built during 2016. It was lots of fun visiting different places!

Built-in thematic based vocabulary learning environment on Minecraft.

Built-in thematic based vocabulary learning environment on Minecraft.

I'd like to share a random thought before I forget.

I am a strong believer of thematic based vocabulary learning as opposed to semantic clusters. It's true that we learn numbers and colors using semantic clustering; however, aside from that, I think learners remember words faster/better when they are presented under a specific schema. At lease this is what I believe how we built our vocabulary as we grew up.

Thematic vocabulary sets refer to a group of words that belong to a specific schema. In minecraft, to make a bed, learners need to wooden planks and wool. To get wool, we can shear a sheep to get wool or to craft wool from strings. Here "bed, wool, wood planks, string, sheep, and shear" are thematic sets.

Sure there are things that are present in semantic sets such as different types of wood planks, but you'd only come across one or two types of wood at a time. You don't remember all different types at once (as presented in textbooks). Some particular types of wood planks only exist in certain biomes.

Unlike EFL textbook curriculum where vocabulary are often introduced with semantic clusters so that sentence patterns can be practiced by drill and kill activities replacing words in semantic sets, learning new vocabulary in minecraft is more meaningful and situated within context relevant to the players.

Of course, this would apply to any other similar types of gaming. Please feel free to comment or disagree. =)

What are some thematic vocabulary for throwing a birthday party on MC?

Making a case of vocabulary learning via Minecraft videos and playing Minecraft.

Making a case of vocabulary learning via Minecraft videos and playing Minecraft.

A learner needs to encounter a vocabulary for more than seven times for incidental vocabulary learning to take place. The number of times of retrieval of a word meaning is what matters. With this in mind, after a closer look at one single Minecraft video, I found that some target vocabulary occur more than seven times (I'm not counting the function words).
For example, the word “lamp” is a required vocabulary listed in the elementary school English curriculum in Taiwan (which only occured 3 times in the textbook). The word "lamp" has occurred 26 times within several minutes in the video. My guess is that this would not normally occur in a National Geographic video where the narrative are usually pre-edited to be succinct and to the point. The Minecraft gamers’ monologues are spontaneous speech and contain redundancies that provide repeated exposure to certain vocabulary in a short amount of time.
Here's an example of the word "portal" that is mentioned repeatedly.

00:44
8 portals 8 brand-new portals in our
00:48
Minecraft world and we have to find
00:49
emeralds in every portal ladies and
00:52
gentlemen let's get started on this
00:54
beautiful map called 8 portals so
00:56
welcome to 8 portals let's watch this
00:58
beautiful introduction welcome to the 8
01:01
portals you have to find all emeralds
01:04
okay okay I got that okay Indy portals
01:08
are different worlds okay so basically
01:11
every portal is a different world in
01:13
every world there are eight emeralds and
01:16
we have to find eight emeralds in each
01:19
world and there's eight portals can you
01:21
find them all

By the way, this is from unspeakablegaming's video. Mattie has been watching his channel lately. Don Carroll What do you think?

I found my old file of how to use COCA and Lextutor that I created for my class.

I found my old file of how to use COCA and Lextutor that I created for my class. I used vocabulary profile on lextutor to do the analysis. I selected BNC-COCA25 for the analysis.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v3lwm00er4dbnv3/corpus%202013%20December.pptx?dl=0

Don Carroll Here's how to get subtitles.

Don Carroll Here's how to get subtitles. 1. Click on the ellipsis to open transcript. 2. Then on the upper right corner of the transcript click on the vertical ellipsis to toggle timestamps. 3. Copy and scroll down and past it on word. Save it as .txt file. =)

Mattie and Emanual continue to surprise me of how much they know about Minecraft mini games.

Mattie and Emanual continue to surprise me of how much they know about Minecraft mini games. Mattie collected snow balls, turned them into snow blocks and created a platform in high altitudes. Emanual explained this game called Spleef.
https://youtu.be/lhOSIYwRh3A

Look what Surajmukhi has built in the desert while we were gone! Amazing!!

Look what Surajmukhi has built in the desert while we were gone! Amazing!!

It's 1:00am.

It's 1:00am. Mattie is still building a new shelter on an island with Don. From the island, Don Carroll showed me see three ocean monuments lying slightly underneath the water over the horizon. Mattie can not wait to explore them. He would like to start with the one that Don, Dak, and Vance worked on. In this photo, Don was showing us the way to the three monuments when he got zapped by a guardian. Watch out!! Don Carroll, thanks for playing with Mattie. I totally fell asleep. Mattie built a pen for sheep and he's got lots of milk left in a chest for us to explore later. (Mattie says: "And there're some random animals in there, like horse, chicken, and most important, there's a cow on the side with the chicken that lay eggs.") Hope to see you on MC tonight 11pm Japanese Time.

Today, after having a discussion with Dakotah Redstone, Maha Abdelmoneim, and Rose Bard, we realized that Minecraft...

Today, after having a discussion with Dakotah Redstone, Maha Abdelmoneim, and Rose Bard, we realized that Minecraft provides the context that EFL learners need. For Japanese and Taiwanese learners in communicative language learning approach, they often find themselves memorizing dialogues and role playing in classroom settings. They would be engaged in information gap task so that they can exchange for information that allow them to engage in authentic like conversations.

However, if we allow some class time or even lab time outside of class for learners to play Minecraft, it would resolve our issue of the lack of context in EFL settings where students are not surrounded in an environment to engage in authentic conversations.

Situated Learning: Minecraft provides the much needed diverse context for EFL learners to engage in conversations. For example, for the excavation of underwater temple, Don and I both got poisoned by the Gardians. He told me that I need milk. To get more milk, I asked: how do I get more milk? I was shown where the cows were and that the buckets of milk were in the chests. I was engaged in real conversation in that context and there was no need to pretend and role-play. Dak taught me to use sand to build a passage so that we can reach the temple entrance safely. He was proving instructions and giving directions, sometimes comments that were humorous. We talked about absorption of sponges, temple entrance, night vision and water breathing potions.

So, as a language teacher, what is needed is a clear goal of language learning for each context. Have in mine what the target vocabulary is for certain context, and what language functions and structures that might be involved and include that in the lesson.

Provide Comprehensible Language Input. We can either use Photos and Captions like what Don Carroll has done on G+ as content (as suggested by Dakotah Redstone) or we can do a video of players engaged in the excavation, or playing hide and seek, etc. and use it as a flipped classroom video for learners to watch before they come to class.


Opportunities for Situated Language Output. After in class lessons and discussions, retelling what they’ve watch, or discuss how they would do it differently, locate a lab and have students work on the same project (I.e. build an automated farm) in Minecraft in pairs or teams.

Production and language Feedback. Learners ac prerecord a video of their work in progress, or introduce what they’ve done. Limit their recordings to 3 minutes max so that the instructor and give corrective feedback on target grammar or usage or vocabulary...to the whole class.

We can build many different theme based lessons: farming, exploring underwater temples, securing villagers in the desert, horse riding, constructions, and etc. These videos can be videos from YouTube Minecraft Chanels or we can make the Xbox recordings ourselves.

Sorry I have to stop here. I need to take Mattie to Badminton practice.

Group Photos at Steve Jenkinson's Village with Vance Stevens, Maha Abdelmoneim, Mattie Tsai, Jacob, and Emanuel.

Group Photos at Steve Jenkinson's Village with Vance Stevens, Maha Abdelmoneim, Mattie Tsai, Jacob, and Emanuel. Jacob, Steve's son, was showing us how to ride on a IIama and change saddles of different beautiful patterns! Then we went hunting with Jacob, with Emanuel, Bardrose, and I riding on llamas. Later Mircea Patrascu joined us and helped us find Jacob who got lost during hunting for rabbits. XD Thanks Jacob for showing Mattie and Emanuel how to tame llamas. They are usually found on extreme hills. In our case, we warped to alpacapoint, a house built on top of an extreme hill, and searched for llamas there. In the third photo, you will see Matt, Jacob, and Emanual leading 7 llamas on their trip back to the village in the desert. Today, the kids discussed (argued about) words “lead" vs. "leash," different ways of pronouncing potatoes from a song (thanks to Steve), and llamas vs. alpacas. Interesting!!!

Title

Every night on Minecraft was pleasant and surprising. Since Mattie and I missed the server party on the 25th, we decided that we wanted to visit the village and trade with villagers as well. With Maha’s help, we warped to the villagers. Mattie traded happily but I was right there, totally surprised to have found a big sign " BardRose’s House." It's another one of many houses Rose built. “Wow, Rose, how many houses did you build? This is the fifth one that I found in three weeks!” Yes, I’m only three weeks old in Minecraft, so I am quite surprised. Later we found out it was the old 2016 Evo town. After Vance and Rose have joined us, we began our adventure back to the 2017 Evo town by rail. By RAIL!!! How cool was that!!! This was my first! :)

Mattie and I laughed our butts off when our carts bumped into each other’s and went for the opposite direction. Mattie found this amusing. He would intentionally bump into my cart so that I could not arrive at the station but go backwards unwillingly. The screaming and not knowing what to do, not being able to stop my own cart from moving backwards were what he found amusing!!!!! (Well, it was funny. I won’t deny it.) Rose and Vance were really patient with us fooling around. There’s this one time Rose decided that we go on foot on the rails. She went first, I second, followed by Mattie. Well, Mattie didn’t want to go last, so he ran past me and I fell into the water drowning. Mattie laughed at my clumsiness and he couldn’t stop laughing when I scream. He would help me hold the space bar to resurface to save me but that wouldn’t stop him from wanting to see me fall again.

Anyways, like what Vance wrote about our adventure, it was an unforgettable evening learning about the railing system and minecarts. I was really glad that Rose was there to teach us. Riding the minecarts is like going on rollercoaster rides. I didn’t know where the minecarts would take me or if I would arrive safely but the scenery on the way was fascinating! A railway system that connects the old town EVO2016 with our EVO 2017 is just WOW!