#facilitatorlearning

Robots are taking over!

As we begin preparations for our upcoming robot themed exhibition Our Friends Electric, MinecraftCLUB will start to look at creating a world fit for robots. Before we can do this we need to learn how robots in Minecraft behave. 

If you have any exciting robot themed tutorials or projects to share, please let us know!

Robots and Automation - It Begins!

Our first week of discovering robots in Minecraft. So far we've mastered walking and bouncing.

There’s a different vibe to the group. There’s thinking and problem solving which was previously lacking in their exploration. This has been extremely fun to observe and take part in. A great start to our new project in response to our exhibition Our Friends Electric starting in July.

Account is not eligible...

Last weeks MinecraftCLUB session was unfortunately halted because, for an unknown reason, all of our 365 Education logins were displaying the above text:

“This account is not eligible to use Minecraft: Education Edition”

Why? All licences were paid for and active on our Windows Store for Business account. All had been in use for the weeks previous. No information was available about server issues or potential problems with networks. It was a mystery, but thankfully not a misery. 

A bit of back story:

It wasn’t easy for us to get educational status from Microsoft to use Minecraft: Education Edition. It was actually a bit of a struggle, with conversations in two different continents and with different areas of the organisation, none of which knew what to do about providing access to the beta last June. We missed out on purchasing the previous incarnation: MinecraftEdu, which was proving perfect to help us deliver a digitally creative response to our gallery programme, by a matter of days. Microsoft had bought that out as well and for four months there was no way of a new institution gaining access to an educational version of Minecraft before Minecraft:EE was released. 

To clarify, Minecraft:EE states educational status is: 

“ An eligible public museum must be an agency or institution organized on a permanent basis for essentially education or aesthetic purposes, and utilize a professional staff to exhibit tangible objects to the public on a regular basis.”

Now public galleries often come under the label of “museum” for ease and this is also in the American clarification of this type of organisation. QUAD as a public gallery is a permanent location, which provides both education and aesthetic programmes, as funded by Arts Council England (ACE). It is open 363 days a year, with gallery and/or educational delivery throughout. So, pretty much a “regular basis”. Finally, we only hire professional permanent and freelance staff to deliver our programmes. So that’s all bases covered, right? Nope, they still said no. This was highly frustrating and at times felt hopeless. What changed this you might be wondering? You’re using Minecraft:EE for the purpose of artistic reflection, we can see this in this blog. Well, the short answer is we told them that Apple and Adobe recognise us as educational institutions. Which, isn’t a lie. They do. We were using their tools to deliver creative activities. They saw this, why couldn’t Microsoft?

The good times:

So it all changed, we had access to the beta and MinecraftCLUB was born. Now the beta was not MinecraftEdu, which we came to fall in love with through our work with BlockBuilders. It doesn’t have the same ease of use and the teacher screen doesn’t have the same functionality at all. Please, oh please bring FREEZE back! But with everything in the arts and culture world, you adapt and use what you have and for the most part Minecraft:EE has been great. The functionality of the now subscription version is good and for our MinecraftCLUB and MinecraftLAB activities, it seems to be going the job well. Minus some slowing of the servers during busy workshops. 

I’ll be honest I’ve been wanting to write the above back story of our history with Minecraft:EE for a while. There must be other arts organisations out there who, with the desire to engage with audiences through digital tools, will be looking at Minecraft. In all honesty I would have struggled to write it WITHOUT SHOUTING IN CAPS TO EXPRESS MY FRUSTRATION AND RAGE before last weeks lock out. Yes, it was frustrating. No, we weren’t able to resolve it within the session. No, there was and has been no explanation for it. Minecraft:EE were contacted through their educational forums and although we were directed to the business store, this was three days later. What it taught me is actually giving young people an opportunity to explore other things together was also highly creative and rewarding. Some sat and played online games together, two actually came together to watch their favourite Youtuber give a tutorial on building in Minecraft. Neither of them knew they like the same channel until this point. It was this ease of “hey things don’t always work, but we can still do things together” that made me realise that there’s no reason to get mad at Microsoft, there were still rewarding moments to be had as a group away from Minecraft.

So this week we’re back on working on our project for the FORMAT International Photography Festival’s theme of ‘habitat’. Wish us luck!

Introducing: MinecraftLAB at Derby QUAD

Well, it’s been a while since we last posted and in all honestly it’s been due to the new Minecraft: Education Edition (M:EE) having a few issues. I’ll go into these in a later post, but I’m glad to say that we’re back up and running and have started with the first of our MinecraftLAB’s. 

MinecraftLAB is an opportunity for us to open our Minecraft activities out to those who we’re unable to accommodate for in our MinecraftCLUB. It allows us to engage with more young people interested in Minecraft and respond to our exhibition programme here at QUAD.

Our first MinecraftCLUB project “Glitched” started off well, but we soon found that it didn’t engage the club members enough to want to continue building after a few weeks. This lead to us leaving the world behind and opening the group to sessions that were free flowing in terms of creativity. This made a lot of the members happy (although some still weren’t because we were focusing on creativity and not UTTER WORLD DESTRUCTION!!), but it was not fulfilling the reason MinecraftCLUB exists - to respond to our exhibition programme using Minecraft. It was at this point we switched over to the licensed version of M:EE and it proved just as problematic at the trial version. However, it is important to note there have been improvements since. These issues meant that we were unable to start a new project and thus the sessions became a free for all for members to make whatever worlds they wanted. This was good. It gave everyone what they wanted and gave facilitators a chance to test out what was going wrong and where.

With issues surrounding getting an hour session once a week working properly, you can imagine our tension going into the first full day non-member workshop. But you know what? It worked really well. The session, inspired by and responding to the upcoming FORMAT International Photography Festival theme of habitat, contained two worlds using the same seed. This was intended to avoid any lagging or connection issues previously experienced, but it gave us a good platform to see how individuals and collectives responded to the theme. 

In an unintentional way, one group contained boys for around 11-14 and the other both sexes aged 8-14 and at first there was a clear difference in build types and skill. The boys built complicated structures and blended them together with each other and the surrounding environment, however, the mixed group later became more co-operative than the boys and collaborated more. 

The end result contained two worlds that considered builds on their internal and external aesthetics and functionality, as well as their place within their environment. This was a heavy session as well. Leaving out breaks, each participant had a total design and build time of around 5 hours. This focus on one project as a group made observing the building highly rewarding. You watched an idea be conceived, developed, built and refined in a habitat of creativity. This is what our MinecraftCLUB was missing. A drive to work together, with the freedom to create but still based on a collective theme responding to our gallery exhibitions. 

This has given us a good understanding of how we can make changes to the group to still make our sessions interesting to our young people, but also to ensure they’re responding to our exhibition themes, aesthetics and social context. 

In short, we’re back, we’re better and we’re building. Together. 

There was lots of creativity again today, as the group continued their builds from last week.  Two distinctive forts, with a debate about rights to build a bridge, Trump, politics, young peoples opinions: a great session overall, and certainly interesting as an observer!

The group carried on with their creations from last week, expanding territories and constructions.  Nations were formed, inspired by elements: Rock, Water, Air.  Debates were had about land ownership with two groups encroaching each others builds, which needed some careful management.  In the end, a solution was found as both bridge constructions met in the middle.  One group, aka Rock Nation, took things a bit further, forming of a sort of border control / gate inspired by the fantastic and thought-provoking ‘dystopian document thriller, Papers, Please.  This puzzler positions you as a border control agent in a Soviet-esque state, Arstotzka, and is a brilliant exploration in morality.

Rock Nation then required passport identification (made using the in-game camera and portfolio) for access to their ‘state’, and even recruited people to be stationed at the border.  It made me think about the recent political campaigns in both the US and UK, national identity and this bizarre concept of borders that the modern world has designed...

Some of the group decided to use the subject of the recent election as inspiration to some new builds, including a Donald Trump statue (below).

Others explored the new expanded world (I switched it from fixed to infinite in an attempt to appease some of the difficulties of space) discovering an island covered in mushrooms, while a couple of the group built an underwater house, which did flood for a brief moment...)

There was one incident of an underground explosion by an unknown member of the group, which was disappointing and something to keep an eye on.  It would be super useful if we could ban certain items, but I couldn’t figure out how to do so on the day...

Great stuff as usual.  I look forward to seeing it develop even more in the weeks to come!

- Michael Sargeant, QUAD Assistant Curator

A well deserved break!

Lets be honest, we all need a break now and again and after losing all our wonderful work on our glitch world last week due to a server crash, we needed a change from the norm. Young people have fed back that they’d like a change from the group task, so this week we had a vote and a new creative world was generated for some open creative fun. Within minutes the words “does anyone want to work with me on building…” were uttered and new collaborations were born. Including:

Underground Bunker

Wooden Tower

Meteor

House on the Cliff

Underground Maze

Underwater House

Nothing glitch related, but the change in dynamic is obvious and there is pretty much zero griefing and a friendly atmosphere of mutual creativity.

The Calm of Team Work

Well, not entirely, but having started the term project it has meant that we’re able to just dive straight into the 1hr season without any introductions or precious crafting time stealing activities. And, in all honest, this has resulted in a much better environment for the session. Young people are working together, creating solutions to problems, discussing what they’re doing and see to be having a much better experience overall. 

It goes to show that once they get going young people will self facilitate, it just takes a little push and some battling to get them there. 

John - Digital Participation Curator

Hints and Tips:

Log everyone in before the session starts to make it an easy transition into the game.

Selfie Camera’s in Minecraft: Education Edition are great, as long as you don’t mind being photobombed (by Ellie).

Yesterday evening’s session was a bit of a welcome back to our young people, to welcome a new member, introduce the group to our first big project and to have a little fun. As part of this we introduced the use of the Cameras in Education Edition (EE) and it proved to be a lot of fun. However, as you cannot be invisible to users as a teacher/facilitator in EE we were promptly followed by young people (mainly Ellie) with one purpose… to photo bomb our shots. 

Selfie Cameras (just known as “Camera” in game) are simple to use. You place one down, touch it and in old school large format plate camera fashion a fuse is lit giving you a countdown to get yourself in position before a flash and Polaroid style frame appears with your shot right in front of your eyes. The camera is great, it follows your position (left and right only) until the image is taken and you get to see your character posing away (crouching looks better) in front of whatever you wanted to shoot. To view the images, you need a Portfolio which pretty much works as a single image per page photo album. Images can then be exported to a location of your choice as a .zip file.   

As you can see from Michaels shots above and mine in a previous post, we thought it would be great to capture shots of young peoples work as the session went on. However as you can also see, this started to become more and more difficult due to photo bombing. So, before you start to use the cameras in EE, you may want to define some rules around them. Especially when young people are setting up shots only to have them ruined by another player.

The cameras are fun and a great way to capture work and get a group together for a team photo, but be aware, photo bombers exist in the digital world as well. 

John - Digital Participation Curator

Hint:

Useful EE slash commands 

/give @a camera 1 = give all players 1 camera (reusable)