Minecraft & More

The mission of the Minecraft and More….. Unsymposium is to continue the discussion that began at the ISTE 2013 Conference at San Antonio. The most popular virtual world or game (depending on your viewpoint) was this lego looking, 1980s graphics, easy to navigate 8 bit digital sandbox.Our purpose for the Minecraft and More......UnSymposium is to bring a group of educators together to discuss, plan and play.

The tone and tenor will be rather informal. ISTE SIGVE, VSTE and SIGML members will be either leading or facilitating the Google Hangout for most topics. Depending on the session you might be watching a Hangout, joining a Hangout, touring a Minecraft server or practicing your Minecraft building skills. This UnSymposium is meant to be the continuation of a discussion not the end of a discussion. So expect to see more events and open house in Spring and Summer 2014. To register and receive updates please go here.

We have activities starting on the top of the hour. We will be livestreaming all events through Google Hangout. Please be patient if we do not start exactly on time. We will be ending at 45 minutes after the hour to ensure time to setup the next Google Hangout.

On Friday night, we will be going into Morrowcraft, and on Saturday you will have the opportunity to visit Jokaydia's Massively and log into the Games MOOC server. If you would like to participate in events on the Minecraft servers on Saturday, you will need to email games.mooc@gmail your Minecraft character name by Friday at noon PT. Those two servers are whitelisted, so we will need to add you. All servers for the UnSymposium are using version 1.6.4, so you will need to make sure your account is set to 1.6.4.

The UnSymposium has the following objectives:

1) Crowdsource one page document that teacher can give their administrators on using Minecraft in their classroom to be distributed electronically and on site at the ISTE 2014 Conference. http://bit.ly/1avcD8a

2) Crowdsource a 5 – 10 page white paper on Minecraft in education to be distributed electronically and on site at the ISTE 2014 Conference. http://bit.ly/19f3bGg

3) Brainstorm the logistics of a virtual and geographically located Minecraft themed Hackathon on Friday April 4 and April 5, 2014. http://bit.ly/1c9rypC

We will be using google documents to crowdsource.

The UnSymposium has the following activities:

On Friday at 6 pm ET, we will begin with a very quick welcome and login to Morrowcraft with Marianne Malmstrom. We don’t know a better way to start this UnSymposium than with a visit to a highly successful Minecraft program. Dr. Bronwyn Stuckey, independent consultant in gameful design and community development will be our guide over Google Hangout.

At 8 pm ET Dr. Farah Bennani, Lucas Gillispie and Chris Luchs will discuss Minecraft for STEM, particularly focusing on biology and computer science. This most likely will kick off the discussion of the Minecraft themed Hackathon.

At 9 pm ET, Tanya Martin, Vasili Giannoutsos and Kae Novak from the ISTE SIGVE ( Special Interest Group- Virtual Environments) along with Dr. Chareen Snelson will have a discussion on Minecraft and Machinima. This will include what videos are students watching and where is the learning happening. They'll also talk about the ISTE SIGVE EduMachinima Fest and the White House Film Festival.

On Saturday, we start at 2 pm ET with a discussion with leaders from the SIGVE, SIGML, the Games MOOC, rgMOOC, VSTE, and Inevitable Instructors on Minecraft in learning. This will include brainstorming the Minecraft one page document and white paper and any other discussion that evolved during the UnSymposium on Friday.

At 3 pm ET, we are meeting with Jokay to tour the Massively @ jokaydia server. Make sure that you send in your character name on Friday evening so that it could be forwarded to Jokay.

At 4 pm ET, we have Trish Cloud @trishcloud for Q and A. We’ll start with how to setup a Minecraft Club at your school and then continue on to discuss mobile and Minecraft, coding and all things techy.

5 pm ET, we’ll do a basic building session with giraffe69 and mousymoose and Trevyn Slusser on the Games MOOC server.

6 pm – 730 pm ET, we’ll have a Minecraft Challenge!

The Fall Games MOOC from Colorado Community College is exploring making, hacking and gaming during this iteration. Minecraft is the maker movement online and the UnSymposium will be hosting a building event – the Minecraft Challenge created by the rgMOOC. Here are the Minecraft Challenge rules.

During this building we’ll also be talking with Kristina Thoennes @kamtonnes on Minecraft resources, Sherry Jones and Steve Getter on Minecraft in a community college class and have commentary from giraffe69 and mousymouse.

At 730 pm, we’ll be wrapping up in Minecraft and will be heading over to VSTE (Virginia Society for Technology in Education)

for an 8 pm for a Minecraft themed social in Second Life. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/59/110/24

This will also be the online kick-off to the annual VSTE conference which starts on Sunday.

If you would like to participate in events on the Minecraft servers, you will need to email games.mooc@gmail your Minecraft charter name. The servers are using version 1.6.4 so you will need to make sure your account is set to 1.6.4.

To register please go to https://inevitableeducation.eventbrite.com/.

This is a fully online collaborative event between the Games MOOC, Inevitable Betrayal Educator's Guild, rgMOOC, SIGVE and VSTE. This educational gathering is an opportunity for you to “assemble your entourage” or expand your personal learning network. It is for educators to build their social network knowledge creation. Hope to see you there and if not – hope to have a great discussion in social media. We'll be using the #gamemooc hashtag.

Social Media

Twitter

@istesigve @proximalzone

hashtag #gamemooc

Flickr sites

ISTE SIGVE http://www.flickr.com/groups/sigve/

Makers, Hackers and Gamers http://www.flickr.com/groups/makershackersgamers/

Google+ Communities

ISTE SIGVE bit.ly/sigvegoogle

VSTE Second Life http://bit.ly/1beqiUx

YouTube

Games MOOC http://www.youtube.com/user/gamesmooc