Inclusivity With Minecraft

In this project with my Year 6 students, we had to come up with a puzzle for world maths day. The students had a brief that we had to create a mathematical puzzle that includes the whole junior school and how they did it was up to them.

The overall message was to be inclusive and the puzzle had to open so that a Year 6 student could explain the method to a year 3 student.

Their ideas were instantly drawn to Minecraft Education Edition due to all children in school being able to access it and the low barrier to entry. The snag was that there needed to be a unified goal. How were we to get to this goal?

I asked my Tech Leaders (the year 6 students who were setting this up) what the goal could be. There were many ideas in terms of invasion games and PvP eSport-type environments. The problem here, I said, was that a year 5 or 6 child is far faster on the controls than a year 3 child who is new to the game. The year 3 children need to be able to be coached and allowed to be involved with the game.

Their attention turned to a collaborative build and how they can build together. This sounded far more inclusive for all age groups. The snag now was what were they going to build and how could it be turned into a mathematical puzzle?

Mathematical Puzzle

The Tech Leaders thought hard a long and were almost arguing over timed builds and scoring of builds that were in ‘secret’ and handed in to be scored. But the puzzle section was elusive.

Then they hit a eureka moment. They said what if everyone added their own blocks based on a LEGO-style instruction kit. I, personally, thought this was excellent. They said, if each section had a score or number, then the teams could be competitve and the maths would be a tally.

The other layer of a problem was time. We have 800 students in the junior school alone and they are arranged by house. So the leaders said why not use a single type of block, say, wool or terracotta and use the colours to build a picture. The fastest wins. It’s got genuis written all over it, I announced. Our problem now is to find out we can turn this into a ‘discovery’ and the children can ‘discover’ the colours.

Discovery

At this point, I kind of had an idea myself as to how the Tech Leader’s ideas of coloured blocks could be mathematical but I needed to coach them with the ‘Grandma technique’

[The ‘Grandma Technique' is an idea from Sugata Mitra who said ‘Don’t tell the children what or how, simply guide with questions your grandma would ask. Simply say ‘how might that work?’ ‘what do you need to make that work?’ and ‘Do you need to ask another adult or a leader how to make that work?’]

The discovery was guided in this way: What are we going to make? And how will everyone know what to make? The answers were colours of blocks and a map of the picture they are going to build. Ah! I said, what tells us a map is a map? They came back with ‘co-ordinates.’ So, if we have co-ordinates how will each person in the team know where to go? They responded with ‘If we have a numbers up the side and letter across the top, then we have a map with co-ordinates!’ A mathematical angle is born.

The map idea was born with a ‘discovery’ element that turns Minecraft into orienteering but with Minecraft blocks. This is the puzzle side kind of done.

My issue here, and I asked the Tech Leaders this, was that I felt this was a bit easy. That the teams would arrive and compete to build a House-made picture in creative mode where, say, Elang House would make a collaborative picture in race against the other Houses of Beruang, Singa and Harimau.

How can we make the colours mathematical in line with the theme of World Maths Day? They were stumped. At this point I needed to give all 8 children a clue. If we searched online for mathematical colours what might we find?

Hex Codes

They all set off in a little quest and they returned in about 2 minutes with Hex Codes for web colours. Bingo! We got there. Hex Codes are…

In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base 16 or hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the common way of representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexadecimal uses 16 distinct symbols, most often the symbols "0"–"9" to represent values 0 to 9, and "A"–"F" (or alternatively "a"–"f") to represent values 10 to 15.

Hexadecimal numerals are widely used by computer system designers and programmers because they provide a human-friendly representation of binary-coded values. Each hexadecimal digit represents four bits (binary digits), also known as a nibble (or nybble), which is 1/2 of a byte. For example, a single byte can have values ranging from 00000000 to 11111111 in binary form, which can be conveniently represented as 00 to FF in hexadecimal. via Wikipedia.

Their idea now was to turn the colours into hex codes and put the hex codes in the co-ordinates of the map and the children are then to put the right colour in the slot. So, are we giving the teams the picture? NO! The cried, ‘You told us to make it a puzzle!’ Ok, ok!

Google Sheets

That was the plan. How do we make it collaborative with the coodinates? The group said that they would make a Google Sheet with all the coordinates on there because all the ‘squares’ [sic] are there already. Then their plan was to send this to the house leaders to show at assembly before the day.

Pixel Art - Revising old Google Sheet Projects

My thoughts now turned to the actual sheet. I knew that they could drop Hex Codes into the cells but this would mean a tough call for the student in years 3 and 4. The Tech Leaders assured me that the image, the Doge Dog (of all things) would be split into a project we did in year 3 anyway: Pixel art. More genius! So the hex codes can be searched for and teams know the colour to use.

Student Ownership

Their aim was to split the colours of the Doge Dog, as we did in Pixel art classes using the sheet tabs in Google Sheets. Each sheet would be a different colour and each team can have this tab. The team would only need to work out where the colours would go with the hex codes in the cells.

The puzzle was for the teams to google the codes and find out which block to place in the map based on discovery and the codes they are given. This actually turned out to be easier than we thought, as we could split the tabs into sets of hex codes for each team.

The next step was for the Tech Leaders to make the template of the Doge Dog in sheets and copy and paste the Hex Codes for the House teams. The Tech Leaders had to make the Minecraft world with the coordinates and layers of colours for shapes of the Doge Dog. This, according the kids, was the best part and that they knew this was going to be a fantastic project for Maths Day.

An example of their Google Sheet is here.

The Tech Leaders then shared the sheets with the House Captains and explained how this worked for them to demonstrate at assembly.

The day itself worked tremendously well and the students were able to run and co-ordinate the day by supporting the teams as they arrived into the IT suites. Unfortunately, and as is always the case in the primary school, time is a constant challenge and we struggled to get the Doge Dog finished. However, the day was super fun and the students owning this event from start to finish was the icing on the cake. Mind you, as in the video above, it’s obvious they loved the event,