Category: EDCI 336 (Page 2 of 3)

This is a category for the EdTech course. Please add this category in addition to the relevant edtech assignment category(ies).

Exploring and gettin’ lost

October 31, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Every time I start playing this game I sit down, and I think “Okay, what am I doing again?”. Maybe if I were playing on a more regular basis it would be easier to progress and look up more information that would help my game play, but time is a hot commodity for me during the school year. For this session I decided to head in one direction and explore whatever I came across. I crafted a compass so I could go in a mostly, straight line. Before I headed out, I visited my zombie spawner that I talked about in my last post. So, after killing all the zombies in there I took out all the candles I had left in there because I think it was impeding the spawn rate. Then it was off on my adventure!

I headed south to explore something that I saw lighting up the sky during the night cycle. It was not very far away and when I got there it looked like Minecraft lava so of course I jumped in! Then I died. So that was a fun learning experience. After respawning and returning to pick up all the loot that I dropped I found that the sun was setting, and I needed to find shelter. However, I wanted to stay in this area, so I started digging and building up a little shelter for myself to spend the night digging/mining in. Which turned out to be great because I was able to mine a bunch of the blocks around the lava but sometimes, they would explode so I should probably investigate what was happening with that.

Once it was day again, I continued exploring south, finding caves to hide in during night to avoid getting mobbed by baddies. I almost made it to a mountain but my time was nearly up and I wanted to head back to my home base because I had a bunch of new items I had no idea what to do with.

So, I made the journey back and I found a merchant along the way, but these people only want to trade for emeralds, and I have no idea how to get those. One more thing to add to the research list. Also, I found out that you can ride lamas, but I do not know how to control them, more research, hahaha! When I got home, I carved up all the pumpkins I had to decorate for the weekend, or forever who knows.

Happy Halloween!!

Until next time!

Seventh week reflection

October 28, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

For this week’s class, a large amount of class time was spent in discussion groups. The groups were created using topic suggestions from students and then a vote to see which 5 subjects had the most interest. We were encouraged to change rooms and get involved in the conversation which was a bit awkward because I had to ask to change rooms but I’m happy that I was able to move around as much as I did. It was interesting to see how many people gravitate to certain topics. I was in a room with 8 people at one point, and the next room I went into only has 2 other people in it. I don’t often participate in a situation where there is a free flow between groups so you are free to visit any of the groups at any time. It was a really great exercise and since each group made a list of points that were discussed the class has a document to reference and some resource suggestions from Michael. One resource lead me to Trevor Mackenzie’s website where I read several of his posts about implementing inquiry and a Google slide presentation that made some good points on parts of the inquiry process. For example, in the slides Trevor points out that when you are using inquiry with a class students come up with questions about their inquiry project but teachers need to find ways to tie those questions to curriculum and learning standards.
We had some great take aways from this weeks class, but I find myself saying that for all the classes I am in right now.

With some guidance from Michael I have been looking more into using OBS and Twitch as a solution to streaming the charity event on Nov 7. After doing a bit more research I think OBS will be the best for having the video, audio, and customization I am looking for. I did a quick set up to see how much time it would take to set up and it was fairly easy. Now I have to create some templates for the different scenes I will be switching between during the stream. I will be using PhotoShop to make those templates but that is a story for another day.

Until next time!

Digging Deeper and Deeper

October 25, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I have been playing this game for a while now and I think I am starting to see how people sit and play for hours and hours and not even notice the time pass. Since I have many assignments, classes, work, and general life going on most of my time is scheduled and that includes time working on this free inquiry. Alarms and timers on my phone have been a life saver in this Covid-19 world where most of my time is spent inside at a desk. I have been feeling more at home in my little Minecraft world and after spending a bunch of time digging and pickaxing my way to iron and diamonds I resurfaced to go to my home base so I could drop off a few things. On my way up the mine shaft I had dug I heard the strangest noises. Confused, I started looking around expecting to see an enemy trying to attack me. But there was nothing so I figured I’d have a deeper look once I finished my trip ‘home’. When I went back to investigate the noises were in the same spot so I figured I should start busting down some walls and figure out what was going on.

And then, I found the zombies.

It was strange but so is this game so I cleared the zombies away and walked into the room they were stuck or hiding in. That is when I saw it.

Usually when I find something unfamiliar in this game I do a quick search for what it is before messing with it. Turns out this thing is a zombie spawner and its great for leveling, which is good I guess! The rest of the session I spent enlarging the room so the zombie spawner could do its thing and I’ll go back later for all the sweet low effort experience points.

Until next time!

Sixth Week Class Reflection

October 25, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Part of our to-do list for class this week was to watch some videos taken at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII). I was really interested in hearing about a school in Victoria that focused on inquiry based learning and teaching critical thinking. Hearing Jeff Hopkins talk about the way that students interact with other students and teachers at the school seemed so forign to me. It’s hard for me to think about running a class at an inquiry based school while trying to make sure students hit the milestones set out for them. The material got me wondering how teachers find themselves teaching at this sort of school. Maybe they have experience with inquiry learning, or teaching or maybe they see traditional classrooms not working and want to be part of the transition to a better system. Are the current teachers at inquiry schools the early adopters of the new way we educate Canadians or is this one step of many in education reform?

We are almost a third of the way through this term and I feel like my days are flying by. With the time moving so quickly I am happy to be recording my journey in writing. I think this will be a great resource later when I am trying to remember some content that we have covered.

Until next time!

Fifth week reflection and Minecraft update

October 24, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Fifth week reflection and Minecraft update

There was no class in week five because of the long weekend so I took this time to start exploring some streaming software. I have been involved with the charity Extra Life for the past few years by helping my partner set up their in the person event. The two of us have typically been part of a bigger team that run various games for the 24 charity marathon but like most things this year it is going to be a bit different. This year instead of auctioning off seats at the game table and having a sort of revolving door of players there will only be 7 people playing for the entire 24 hours. In previous years we have streamed the 24 event with an extremely simple set up of one webcam and two microphones because all participants were in the same room. However, this year five people will be in different locations and two will be in the same room. The two people in the same room will each have their own camera and audio feed. To bring this all together I decided to use OBS as our streaming software since it is easy to connect it to Twitch, where the game will be streamed, and OSB has robust features with, what I hope will be, easy to manage menus. I have no experience using OBS but from the tutorials I have looked at it should be a great solution for the stream.

For Minecraft this week I spent most of my time mining and trying to find iron, gold, diamonds, or any other materials hidden in the earth. I decided to just start digging down in a random spot and ended up finding a few pockets of usable materials. Eventually I hit an area where I couldn’t break any more of the blocks, no matter which pickaxe I tried to use on the blocks. I suppose I hit the lowest layer?

As this is a short update I’ll leave it here for now.

Until next time!

Finding my Minecraft home

October 10, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Making Progress

Okay, I have spent a bit more time in this game and this was the first week where I wanted to keep playing after my scheduled time was up. Because of the open world concept that this game has I was finding it hard to really focus on anything. I also found the day-night cycles annoying because I felt the need to run back ‘home’ every time the sun went down. Oh yeah, I found a home!

My Town (it’s a ghost town)

I found an abandoned village at the end of my last session and I was genuinely (a little) excited. I didn’t know that you can set a respawn point at a bed when you sleep in it, so that was great. Now when I die I don’t just appear in a random spot, somewhat close to all the loot I dropped, on the map. I cleared the spiderwebs out of one of the buildings and added doors so I could stay safe during the dangerous night mode in the game. This probably took me way longer than it should have but thats what I get for watching a single how to video on this convoluted game.

This feels familiar, sort of.

During this Minecraft session I started finding a bit more enjoyment in the crafting side of the game. I

Cooking some food in Minecraft

am building up an array of materials and am able to remember where I can find certain materials in the game. In fact, the crafting side of the game reminded me of the game Stardew Valley. Which got me wondering because I enjoyed playing Stardew Valley so why wasn’t that same enjoyment coming through in Minecraft? There is even a day/night cycle, a part of Minecraft that I have been frustrated by, in Stardew Valley so what gives? Then I realized that I stopped playing Stardew Valley after I had completed the storylines in the game. So maybe that is the problem, although I’ve spent hours in loot-grind cycles in other games. It could be the open world, no obvious goals that makes it seem a little pointless to me.

Wait, is Minecraft “free inquiry” in game form?!

Okay I’ll have to unpack that idea on my own for a little bit. Next time I’ll be talking about venturing away from my new found home and delving deep into the earth around me, after all it is called MINEcraft.

Until next time!

Fourth Week Reflection

October 10, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

This week I decided to look into using Trello. We had talked about this app in class and I was intrigued because I am always looking at ways to schedule myself or groups more efficiently. At first Trello looked like Padlet, which I was using frequently in the summer for work. I used Padlet to work on weekly camp schedules and activities with my coworkers so we could both add in ideas where we thought they would fit best. However, after working in both apps I can see how much more powerful Trello is.

Details Details Details!
I was impressed with how much this app allows you to edit in a single ‘card’. For instance, you might have a card labeled “English 201 Essay” but you can click into that card and add a more detailed description, a checklist, a due date, or assign that card to a member of a team you are working with. You can also assign colours (Trello also includes colour blind options) to cards, so you could make all your biology assignments appear blue, but those cards will turn red if not completed by the due date you assigned them. Although I wish they applied a traffic light system to the due date so you get a warning, yellow colour change, when you are 24hrs from a due date.

I was roaming the internet looking for helpful board templates and wow is there a bunch available out there! I love being able to try out different systems because I am able to see what I like best from a variety of sources and then merge them into something that I like working with. Trello boards are no different, so I’ll be copying some of the boards I have found to see what works for me.

If you want to copy some free Trello boards here is a video of how to copy a Trello board.

I found the Trello boards in the above video through this YouTube account.

Until next time!

A Minecraft post for people sensitive to motion sickness

October 4, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Photo by Nina PhotoLab on Unsplash

This week I spent more time in the world of Minecraft but with a few changes. The first session I played I had to cut a bit short because I was overcome by nausea and dizziness. I originally attributed the feelings to the large amount of ice cream I had eaten while I was playing but was worried it may have been motion sickness. After paying for a while during my second session my suspicions were confirmed, Minecraft is among the first person view games that give me motion sickness. I have had this happen with other games before (Portal and Halo to name a couple) but not all first person view games have this effect on me. To solve, or at least lower, this issue I have a couple tricks I try before giving up on a game so I tried these out on Minecraft to see if I could continue this inquiry.

First I went into settings and lowered the mouse sensitivity, this makes the movement of your mouse slower on screen so that instead of flicking all around in the field of view your “head” moves slower within the game. Less chaotic movement in the game can be earlier on the tummy sort of how going down a rollercoaster gets some adrenaline going where going down a rollercoaster while spinning would be much uhm, messier. I mentioned field of view and this is another setting that can be changed in Minecraft, and many other games. I find that a wider field of view can help with motion sickness so I increased the field of view, this is also done in the settings menu.

The last change I try to solve motion sickness issues in first person view games is my last resort change. I only do this when the first two changes still leave me nauseous and the change is the “window” the game. This is when you play the game out of full screen mode, as a window, with part of your background/desktop showing. Having the game sit within a stable image really helps me with motion sickness, but the game can feel much less immersive so I only do this if the other changes don’t work.

This photos show a game starting in “windowed” view

Video Games Made, Not Played By Flickr User Myrtle Beach The Digitel (CC BY 2.0) Photo cropped in to show screen

Here is the YouTube video I got these tips from

I’m not sure if there are other methods to solve motion sickness while gaming because these have always worked for me.

I ended up finding an abandoned village in my game, more on that in my next update!

Sign that reads "No video games until after homework is done. Capice?"

No games photo by Robert Couse-Baker Cropped in for emphasis

A good reminder, but what if my homework is video games?

Photo of tree in field — Photo Taken By Carla Scott

Third week reflection

October 1, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

Photo Taken By Carla Scott

This week we took a break from a typical class and had guest speaker Jesse Miller join us. Their presentation was about social media in education, and safety concerts around that. Miller was also speaking to broader digital identity, rights, and literacy among students and school staff members.

It was a great presentation partially because I had never really spent time to really think about topics they brought up, like how schools handle cell phone policies. I supposed I aged myself a bit by saying that, but when I was in secondary school students having cell phones was very rare. Having never been on the receiving end of this debate the idea of cell phones being confined to bags all class never bothered me. When Miller talked about teachers including a phone break in class it made me think of all the times when I’m feeling stuck, or can’t focus so I check my phone or watch a couple quick YouTube videos to have a sort of brain break. There are also times where I am on a roll and head down for long periods of time, but I think using timed breaks can really help maintain focus. There have been many times where I am dreading the start of a project because I foresee it taking X amount of time and its really daunting, or I don’t even know where to start. When starting is the hardest part I try thinking “I’ll just try for 20 mins and then take a break” I’m not sure why the promise of a break has this effect on me but it can be really amazing what is produced in that time. That was a bit of a long explanation but I think what I am trying to say is the promise of “free time”, even 5 or 10 minutes, can be really motivating.
I was also really interested in the conversation about boundaries and expectations being a way to empower students. I think this is a great idea and I’ve used a similar technique at summer camps with children. We set up “camp rules” that we make as a group so everyone has a say in what we want to put into and see from campers and leaders. This activity always results in more community accountability as the children seem to feel more like they are an important member and decision maker rather than a person that has to follow a list of boring rules made up by the leaders.
Now, I’m off to play some more Minecraft!

Second week reflection

September 27, 2020 / Carla / 0 Comments

I know it is only the second week of this course, and third week for some other courses, but I have to say that I am already finding due dates to be an issue for me. I suppose it is more about the amount of assignments and keeping track of which is due when, or when which assignment’s due date changes and then recording the new due date. This is definitely gearing me up for a high level of organizational skills.
This week we looked at copyright and open education resources which was really exciting! I think it is pretty amazing that teachers freely share lessons and activities with others, there are some sites where a contributor can price their content and that is totally understandable. I was also impressed with how much (free or priced) lesson content for teachers is available. I suppose I had always thought of lesson planning as a job teachers did outside of class on their own or maybe with a fellow staff member or two. Knowing that there are collections available is a bit of a relief and gives an almost collaborative feel to the lesson planning process. Even just seeing what is being used in classrooms at different levels is intriguing.

It was nice to chat with some of my classmates about the movie “Most likely to Succeed”. I like that we had a chance to voice what excited us and what we found to be problematic about the movie. It was really nice to hear others opinions about it even when I had thought about an aspect differently than a classmate.
Hopefully I can start posting these blogs a bit earlier in the week.
Until next time!

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