Monthly Archives: September 2012

Why I have been quiet on #digitalstudies and what I am working on

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This week at school we have had a consultant working with us on iPad usage in schools. He and I were talking about being able to make change on a large scale versus being ‘stuck’ in a single school. Although the consultant said he still does some teaching it didn’t seem to be on a very regular basis and my response was that for me instigating change is best done whilst teaching as much as possible. It is the best way to see your ideas and strategies put into practice and assess where things are going right or wrong.

This in a sense is why I am enjoying working on #digitalstudies whilst still being a teacher and not employed by some consultancy. It’s tough and we may not be able to affect large scale change but if I consider that we already have a number of schools running variants of #digitalstudies based on some of the principles we have developed I think it’s been remarkably successful.

The reason why I have been quiet though on #digitalstudies for the last month is because of the fact that after all the work last year I just want to teach it now in class. I want to put into practice what we have developed and test out how it actually works. I do though have a letter ready to go to DfE regarding general ICT curriculum matters and I’m considering writing to BCS and Royal Society of Engineering dependant on daily pressures.

One thing I have been tweaking is a set of competencies for #digitalstudies. One of the entire aims of #digitalstudies has been digital badges as a form of acknowledgement of pupils progress in class. The actual assessment still needed to take place and this is where the competencies come in. These have been developed slightly in line with what The Corporate IT Forum have been saying about the ICT curriculum. I have tweaked these recently, particularly the last few ones, and it is starting to look better.

I will probably write a second blog soon on what is happening within lesson time.

From Evernote:

#digitalstudies competencies
Competency Strand
1. The ability to write a program and understand their uses Digital Technology
2. The ability to use technology as part of a business process including developing a product idea and taking it to market Digital Literacy / Digital Society
3. The ability to select and work with computer hardware digital technology
4. The ability to create simple multimedia for an audience and understand its use Digital Authoring / Digital Society
5. The ability to work with computer networks Digital Technology
6. The ability to manage data sets through models, simulations and databases digital literacy / digital technology
7. The ability to understand the use of Computer, Data and Privacy legislation in society digital society
8. The ability to use a range of communication and collaboration tools effectively in a relevant context digital society / digital literacy
9. The ability to choose the most effective software and hardware to complete a task digital literacy
10. The ability to write effectively in support of work completed digital literacy

Update on progress with #MinecraftEdu in my school

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A couple of months ago I went to a games festival up north where some pupils and I were fortunate enough to go to a Minecraft workshop where we experienced the Edu version. At the start of this term I therefore decided to buy 25 licences and get Minecraft going at school.

Before I start describing the issues we have been having I do want to clarify that I thoroughly enjoy Minecraft and I buy the concept of it as an enrichment and educational resource in school. As it is obviously still a game which is a work in progress and almost certainly not built for network environments in school you need to think very carefully about buying it. Having access to a supportive and skilled network manager, as I am fortunate enough to have, is also a very good idea.

Onto the actual buying and install process. After having to convince my bursar that paying through Paypal in dollars was ok I ordered minecraftedu and was sent the relevant details. The first issue which came up for me was redeeming the gift codes. Although I followed the suggested process of using email aliases to redeem the gift codes I am still not sure as to why I needed to do this. Surely the purchase agreement should just simply state “download Minecraft client once and put it on 25 machines?”. I lost concentration half way through the process and completely messed up my system of signing up with the 25 aliases. It just seems a time consuming and unnecessary task.

Installing it we also run into issues. Now these issues may arise out of two factors: firstly the game client isn't built for a networked environment like a school and secondly individual schools may have unique set-ups which conflict with how Minecraft wants to run. We use roaming profiles at school which help deliver a consistent desktop experience but also allow saving to network drives.

When Minecraft's client is run it checks to see whether you have the game files and pulls those down. I had to login to the browser version to force a download of the files. Those files are placed in the appdata folder which on our network is cleared when a user logs off. A solution I therefore found was copying .minecraft to the same folder as the client on a machines local drive and then using a .bat to tell the launcher to look in the same location for the files.

This now means we can use straightforward single player Minecraft in school. However a limitation is that we have is that because the launcher and .minecraft are on a machines local drive that means maps created and saved remain on that machine rather than networked. A temporary solution will be to ask pupils to keep a copy of their saves on their personal network drives and then copy that onto C: whenever they want to have a Minecraft session.

In order to fix that I am looking at whether I can use something called symbolic links to create a saves folder on C: which appears to the launcher as if it is a legitimate saves folder but it actually links to a saves folder on the pupils personal network drive.

Once that is working I will then need to solve why the minecraftedu launcher isn't working, set up a server and get machines to talk to each other for a LAN multiplayer session.

A lot to do …