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Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
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Minecraft: Day Five, Project Library and (minecraft) equality
(Minecraft) Social equality, foundations for "Project Library", and eventually... enchantment book/table
A Struggle
I think the struggle right now is no longer a personal one because I have learned how to be self-sustainable. The struggle right now is more of a collective one in terms of community building. How do we come together to form a whole? Like Professor Lesnick said, how do we transition from playing as soloists to playing in an orchestra? I currently see 2 main challenges to collaboration and minecraft world development:
1. The differences in minecraft skill levels within the class (inequality)
2. The analogue world preventing us from being on the server at the same time when we’re not in class. (although I don't know if this problem can be solved)
I attempted to help solve problem one during my last day on minecraft.
An Accomplishment
It all started yesterday when I had my first minecraft play date with Isabelle and Veronica and together we built a community farm. After that, I was inspired to become a business philanthropist. As a result, I built a homeless shelter (near the HI sign) with a treasure chest supplied with bread and pumpkin pie. My placement group and I thought it’d be good to start a library project on minecraft. I think I have set the foundations for this to happen. I have transported a few cows from my farm and created an animal pen next to the homeless shelter so they can be bred with wheat then slaughtered for leather/steak. I have set aside a specific treasure chest for storing paper that can be made from the sugar cane growing in the community farm as well as my personal farm. I have also put up several signs to try to make up for the lack of instructions within the game.
We need this library because there is such a thing called an enchantment book in minecraft. This enchantment book is enhanced when surrounded by 15 bookshelves and when placed on an enchantment table it can enchant swords, armor, pickaxes etc. And probably make zombie killing be as easy as swatting flies ~ sounds pretty magical
More info about the "enchantment book" from this site:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Enchantment-Table-in-Minecraft
An observation
Not to sound patronizing in anyway, but there is a big disparity within our class in terms of who is “well-off” on minecraft world and who is still trying to survive one day at a time. This disparity is stunting our collective development because there are still some people who are trying to fulfill basic needs. These people are untapped sources of labor for community building. You could identify it as the income disparity between the “wealthy” and the “poor” in the analogue world.
After spending this week playing minecraft, my experiences seem to elucidate the idea of access and social inequality in my mind. In the begining we were all a bunch of wild cave men and women behaving out of self-interest. I remember NapoleonBonaparte (Robert) asked me for diamonds and wool during day 2 of minecraft and I told him "sorry, need to take care of myself first." Now, alot of us have homes, farms, advanced mines but others are still helplessly lost. I think I am probably in upper-middle/upper-class position in minecraft world as are several other people who are in similar, if not even better positions.
There seems to be a certain saturation point when more cows/more food/more “stuff” is not going to help you advance any further in the game. Things become less exciting when all you're doing is mining. That is a time when one should behave less out of self-interest and consider a project that helps the collective good. Therefore I am trying to “pay taxes” by feeding the hungry and equal out the playing field by ameliorating some of the differences in skill level that are preventing development. The purposes of the community shelter are to provide for the “homeless and struggling” and help them fulfill their basic needs. That way we can start working towards our collective goal- sooner.
At this moment, i think the trajectory of our community development should be as follows:
1. Improve poverty in minecraft world
2. Build a library
2. Make enchantment table/books
3. Pimp out weapons
4. Turn off peaceful mode & kill some monsters
A question
How do we improve inequality in minecraft world?
How do we build solidarity, construct a library and eventually acquire an enchanted book?