March Break Misgivings and Gaming Hitches

 This post appears on the first day of March Break, 2022. The school spring holiday has been sullied in the past few years. It is no longer a welcomed breather before the exciting but hectic final stretch of the school year. There's too much uncertainty. 

2020 = We left for March Break with only a day's notice to pack up as much as we could because there was going to be a two-week delay before we returned to school. That two week delay was extended, and continued, and it turned out that we didn't return to school at all to complete the 2019-20 school year. 

2021 = We "lost" our March Break because it was decided that the spring break would be postponed until April - and then just one day after returning from this delayed rest, educators were sent back to virtual learning. We didn't return to school after April 7 to complete the 2020-21 school year. 

2022 = We departed for a week away after being told that when we return, all the regulations and routines that were in place to manage COVID would be up-ended. 

It is really difficult to "rest" and "relax" when this pattern of upheaval exists. Will we really return? What changes will "stick" and which will be modified or altered? Will this lead to more illness or absences? For this holiday, I won't be traveling anywhere. I will sleep in, work on finishing a huge project with a looming deadline, go to CrossFit, and have a few appointments (hair and nails). I will try to not think much about school.

Speaking of school ...

Maybe by writing about this school issue, I'll be less likely to think about it during the rest of the week. 

I have been having the hardest time incorporating gaming into my programming. It's not because I don't know how. My years with the GamingEdus has taught me a lot about games-based learning. It's the technological hurdles that are making integration difficult. Let me give two examples.

1) Minecraft with Grade 4-5

Our Grade 4-5 teacher has been keen to use Minecraft Education Edition with her in-person students. Minecraft is still "a thing" with many of the students and she wanted to honour their interests. The students all have school-issued Chromebooks, which runs Minecraft Education Edition, EXCEPT

• teachers cannot play (if an educator logs into a Chromebook, I/he/she/they cannot access M:EE)
• we cannot host a cooperative world (the students can open their worlds but only about two students can join before it crashes)

Playing cooperatively in a shared virtual environment is/was one of the wonderful features of Minecraft. Our board's IT department has not made this a priority (understandably). There's even a bizarre dead-end path if you try to ask for help even installing Minecraft. The Grade 4-5 teacher and I are arranging work-arounds, like solo challenges, but it's not the same. I haven't used Minecraft for a while, ever since Microsoft purchased the property. This recent experience, and an email I received demonstrated exactly why. I just got notifications that I'm required to transfer my Mojang accounts (and I have a lot, because I own several personal and GamingEdus "vanilla" Minecraft accounts) to a Microsoft account. Thankfully, Andrew Forgrave will help me with the tedious and ridiculous process. 

2) Terasology with Grade 3

I'm doing some collaborative teaching with the Grade 3 teacher and her virtual class. I didn't want to repeat my use of Gather, like I did with the Grade 6s for social studies. I did some investigation and stumbled across a Minecraft-like game called Terasology. Since I wasn't sure what devices the students would be using at home and I didn't want anyone to have to purchase any software, I thought this free game would be just right for our purposes. Articles like this one or this one suggested it would be worthwhile to try. Unfortunately, Terasology has been a big flop. The students had difficulty downloading it. Only 8 out of the 16 were successful. Even after reducing the resolution size of the graphics to make it run smoother, game play was bumpy. I opened up my collaborative world and either the students could not find me in the big wide world, or their attempts to join my world failed. We did "play" Gather, even though Gather isn't technically a game, but this was better than all the issues we faced with Terasology.

Thank goodness the gaming hitches aren't related to my personal gaming. I just earned the "GOAT" designation on Animal Crossing New Horizons Paradise Planning, and I just finished paying off my final house loan in Animal Crossing New Leaf.