Reflection Feb 24 class

I have not done rate, distance, and velocity lessons in a few years and I don't teach it so Megan pretty much left me in the dust.

Again, computer issues kept me from being able to successfully participate in the Minecraft activity. I wasn't too concerned about not being able to guide my students through a mining lesson as they are avid Minecrafter's. I learn more from watching them than teaching them for sure.

2/24 Reflection - Lexie

I enjoyed the lesson on speed, velocity, and acceleration.  I have worked with these topics before, but it always great to do a review and problems dealing with it.  In the past I have struggled with calculating velocity and acceleration, but with the more practice I get the better I get.  What I found to be the hardest part of the night was understanding what our small groups were suppose to answer and how to read the graph.  We were able to find the rate of change for each of the segments, but then I was wondering if we had to find the overall rate.  The difficult part about reading the graph was that the letters representing the segments, which is not what I am used to (thinking in Geometry terms).  I think it would have been easier to understand for us if the points were the letters and we found the rate of change of AB (the segment between those points).  That was the one thing our group had to spend the most time on. 

The minecraft part of the lesson was fun.  I did find it difficult because I knew NOTHING about ore deposits.  Once my team let me know some things that were around gold deposits, we were able to get started.  I am still not sure how do determine where deposits will be.  I did hear some of the examples that geologists look for, but it was not enough for me to understand.  Before I do the required lesson, I am going to have to do some serious research on indicators of ore deposits.

Reflection 2/24

I always enjoy doing speed and velocity problems.  At first I wasn't sure if I was doing the problems right, but that was not the case.  I have always enjoyed working with equations, this a great refresher since I have not done math at this level for a very long time.  I really enjoy the Gizmo activities and website.  They will be excellent to use in the classroom and look forward to trying them with my students. 

I finally feel like I have a grasp on Minecraft, the ore deposit activity was fun.  It was good to get support on what to do and how to get around in the program.  I was feeling lost for awhile in this class, but this session really helped me understand things.  I look forward to doing a similar activity with my students.  We have not been using Minecraft in my classroom, but I think we can still get the same results.  We will be using cake and Reese Pieces, this activity will also be a great way to review fractions with my students.  I know they will be excited to do this activity. 

Reflection on 2/24 Class Speed and Velocity

I thought this was due at 5:00 P.M. so I am late!  I love this topic because I never get enough practice for it.  I remember when we had the problem solving class, I tried to solve these problems, and I was so horrible at them.  I think that it was well explained on Monday.  I still missed some in the Gizmo quiz.  Well, that just means I need to practice some more.

The ore deposit...... well, I never do Mine Craft, so it was challenging but working with the other wonderful ladies, I got the support that I needed to be somewhat successful at using the pick ax and getting the blocks that I needed.

I appreciate the support that is offered in all aspects of this class.  Sometimes switching my mind from first grade to adult conversations and upper level math is a leap for me.  Thanks.
Debbie

Speed, velocity, and Acceleration and Ore Deposit - Heather D

     I really enjoyed the speed, velocity, and acceleration part of last night.  I was making errors left and right, but that was my own fault.  I know how to read a graph, and I know how to find and calculate speed, velocity, and acceleration from the graphs.  This took me back to my physics days, and I really miss Physics.

     It was fun to build an ore deposit.  Working in groups is always interesting, but I think we did an okay job building our ore deposit.  We may not have dug down as far as you would find it in nautre, but we did not want other groups to have to dig down forever to find out deposit.  I also think we may have made our deposit a bit large.

     My son and his friend are already looking forward to building an ore deposit later on in the week for their assignment for me.  It will be fun to see what they can do.  As I talked to them about it, they said, "Wait, we get to create the mine?"  I told them yes, but they had to then cover it up.  It will be fun.

Fun at ASTE

Wanted to write a bit about my time at ASTE, and some of how it relates to STEM.  Chip and I presented in a session together about our experiences both in this EDMA693 class as well as other classes, and then we held a Minecraft workshop after that.  As you can imagine the workshop went through many of the same hurdles we've gone through: initial disorientation, key mapping, how to get through the tutorial world, etc.  The two hours flew by.  Out of about 30 attendees, by the time we had all left almost everyone had gotten to the point where they can fly around, place blocks, etc.  There were a couple of issues though - a couple people's computers either didn't have Java installed, or the game ran a little slow due to memory or other computer problem.

The challenge was to build a world that represented something about education, such as a lesson, etc.  I had a few attendees that were fairly experienced with Minecraft and so jumped right into building a world; I'll be posting a YouTube video showing some of the builds that were in there.  I learned so much just from watching how they used tools within Minecraft.  One of the students was particularly keen on joining us for the EDMA693 class held on Monday and that's when he built that race course in short order, complete with pigs and horses, both of which you can ride, and a finish line with trip wires that indicate who won.  What a perfect way to do rate = distance / time problems!  Have a stopwatch set up and do the 25m dash, either with a saddled horse, or a saddled pig with a carrot / stick, or just the little Minecraft guy running on foot.

I had a lot of fun flying around the world looking at the work so far.  I logged in last night with my son and showed him some of the things you all were working on and he was pretty excited, too!  I'll work more on that area later on this week, which brings me to my next point: if people would like I'd like to volunteer to meet in the world at some other time to work on *some* building project, after having learned some of the build tools in greater detail this weekend I would like to share them if people like.  I found working side by side with the student at the conference was very helpful for me personally.  My schedule is a little touch and go the rest of this week but I might possibly be able to work Thursday afternoon (2/26) 2:30pm for an hour or so.

BTW - video of me finding the gold ore from a mine I made in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rN03_gTXKo

2/24 Reflection: Speed, Velocity, Acceleration and Minecraft

Well, as you can probably guess I had a difficult time keeping up with class on Monday.  We were in the USO in Seattle.  Quite a nice place to sit when you have a seven hour layover; it was either take an earlier flight to Seattle or miss our connections altogether.  I managed to remain in class until about 6:15 and actually had better luck with Minecraft than I did with the Blackboard program running.  I was not able to use my microphone during the session due to an audio delay and my chat was also delayed, so anytime I did try to answer questions on speed, velocity, and acceleration it never seemed to post.  I did do some work on paper.  I rarely work with speed, velocity, or acceleration in class because my teaching experience has been in 2^nd and 3^rd grade.  Still, if I review the concepts I am able to calculate speed, velocity, and acceleration; though, I am more comfortable figuring out speed and velocity.  I also referred to a website to review these concepts.

“Speed, Velocity, and Acceleration” Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZo8-ihCA9E

Finally, I enjoyed working on Minecraft with Heather and Debbie.  Heather was very helpful supporting Debbie as I could only type to communicate.  We were able to get started digging in region 3.  I logged back in around 7 when I had gotten to our gate, however Heather and Debbie were no longer there.   I did a little more digging and added some more torches.  I am still a little unclear on exactly how we create a mine, but I will do some searching and figure it out.

-Sara L

Reflection on 2/24 Class

  I love Minecrafting!  This was a fun lesson and I wish my computer made it more amenable to watch the whole thing, but in the mean time, Ben and Kate are raring to go to bury some ore.  We've been doing a little bit of research into where these ores and gems are found.  That graphic from class was a great jumping off point for us to go out and look around for more information about how gems are formed and deposited. We also got a little social  studies lesson on what a "blood diamond" is. Hmmmm....  If my kids were older this would be some really fertile ground to take Minecraft into a socially conscious realm and explore. 


The class on velocity and acceleration was a stretch but I've really been enjoying getting into the Way Back machine to see what I actually remember. It's been really empowering to see that I can dredge up this learning from thirty years ago and make it work! Sometimes it's nice to know what you're capable of.


I was just wondering, are we supposed to start implementing our proposed project or are we supposed to wait for some kind go ahead or tweaking with you guys? Is there a revision process we should be working on? Thank you for the sites that were left on my Proposal entry but am not clear on what to do next? 


Every day this class meets is a revelation and I will be sorry when this one ends.  This has been the best one in the program!

Speed of lightning, roar of thunder.

I have been attempting to tutor students who are working on Calculus.  I found the lesson on speed, velocity, and acceleration very useful.  It is amazing, I took so many courses that were Calculus based, but yet, I remember very little.  Hmmmm . . . maybe I didn't understand Calculus to begin with, that is a bit scary.  

I am excited about the Minecraft ore activity for my lesson plan.  When Sunshine and I collaborated (okay, it was mostly Sunshine), on the activity it was fun.  We learned about emeralds and then we had to duplicate, as close as possible, the conditions that would happen in nature.  This was a little challenging to do in Minecraft, but it is still possible.  Sunshine had great helpers, I could hear them in the background.  I think I am definitely missing something, not having little ones, who are Minecraft gurus, living in my house.  

Class 6 Reflection (2/24)

The review on speed and velocity was much needed.  If you don't use that type of info regularly, it starts to fade.  Thanks for the reminder!

Once I logged into MC and got to the correct location, our group started digging into the side of a big mountain.  It was pretty fun but dark in the cave!  I couldn't figure out how to get a headlamp on, so I followed one of my teammates around in the cave because I couldn't see... or maybe because I was scared :)

I'm a little nervous about creating a mining lesson since my students have not been using MC.  We usually mine out the chocolate chips from a cookie for one of our Mining and Rock lessons, but I'm going to try to think of something new and outside of the box.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  Wish me luck!!

I second the previous comment regarding our STEM Project Proposals.  Shall we get started??

Reflections

I really enjoyed getting back into Minecraft myself.  It was fun, like burying treasure.  It's going to be a fun STEM lesson, my sons were already asking to help with it while Ronna and I were burying our emeralds. 

I really loved going over velocity and distance equations.  It has been so long since I have done it.  It was a nice refresher, and reminder. 

The safari quiz was fun.  I read two of the questions incorrectly, and just answered it too quickly.  If I had paid attention to what it was really asking me I would have gotten 100%.  I was so disappointed at myself for rushing, but I didn't want to miss anything from class. 

I was also wondering about our projects.  We didn't get any comments from you all about them, so do we just go to it and start up on our projects asap? 

Thanks for another great class, and look forward to next week.