5 minute read
The Most Marvellous Minecraft HOLE-IN-ONE Competition
Glenn Malcolm
Primary IT Teacher and Primary IT Teacher Bangkok Patana School
Gaming is sometimes a questionable word where young people are concerned and the constant draw to playing time is a constant parental battle. The complexity of games and the interactions of language, collaboration and ultimately teamwork in a competitive gaming environment sometimes stumps many adults as to 'why' children are drawn to these types of pastimes when, as children many years ago we roamed fields and played sport. However, as a child you may have played computer games at your friend's house all huddled around one screen with maybe four players in Golden Eye on the Nintendo GameCube or SNES. This was how we strategised and collaborated and, essentially connected with our friends for hours on end.
This was 25 plus years ago and those interactions, while very much similar in fun and competitiveness is the main reason I set this competition up. Minecraft has evolved to such an extent that the Education Edition now embodies so many scientific elements such as chemical reactions, coding robots and electrical circuits that to dismiss this source of interschool wonderment to embolden community spirit would dishearten many children.
Competing within Minecraft this time round was themed around golf and the motion the ball takes from teeing off to the final putt. To task students with building a Minecrafty method of teeing off from green as one would in golf and then putting would take their level of ingenuity to newer heights within the game. This action, while expertly demonstrated by Traill International school, Bangkok, is a relatively difficult task for a lot of children - even those who are very adept at the game.
The reason this is so tricky is that there are hidden elements in the scoring as well as those within the way I wanted the children to demonstrate how to make the ball travel. Within Minecraft's Redstone circuitry (Redstone is the name of the electrical system within in the game) children are able to transfer the energy from one type to another. So, if a block is dropped, say, a piece of concrete, this can land on a pressure plate, that in turn sends out a pulse to another block that is made to receive that signal - in many cases a dispenser. As the name suggests, this dispenser can send out an object that can, for a short while, fly while being launched. If this such block, an arrow for example, then depending on the block it hits can continue the electrical 'pulse' ad infinitum. This is where the Rube Goldberg Machine element enters the children's thinking and the team leaders for every competing school.
The students in this competition had to split their 'drive' from the tee into three sections: Tee-off, drive and putt. Each section had to have clear changes in state yet maintain the same block as a the 'ball' at teeoff and putt. So, as in the example above, the children could choose a glass block, dispense this with a switch as the electrical input, land on a pressure plate, release the signal to a minecart and the rail system can take it further to the green and trigger another dispenser to drop the glass 'ball' back into the cup on the green.
This is, for a seasoned player, relatively simple if making simple inputs and outputs. Yet the name of the game is the 'Most Marvellous Hole-in-One'. So the idea, as in a Rube Goldberg machine, is to make it as unnecessarily ridiculous as possible with as many changes as possible along the way.
So which schools entered? We had 127 teams from 11 countries enter the competition which is absolutely amazing as we only expected around 20-30 at the most. There was a four team limit per school, however there could be as many players per team as you could use in your school. Many schools chose to play as an ECA as we did which was the plan from the outset - to allow schools time to run an after school club to facilitate this. What was most impressive, was that many schools entered the competition without having had any knowledge of Minecraft, how to set up teams, external access to open games hosted on-site or even have accounts for children to log into. To do this shows a lot of tenacity from the tech leaders in the FOBISIA schools who are ready to put themselves into a very uncomfortable setting in order to provide a fun and creative outlet for their students. And, for this alone, I say a huge thank you for all the adult leaders who participated in this event as well at the students - who I hear had a lot of laughs and built solid camaraderie over the course of the 6-7 weeks.
Let's take a look at the winners
12-13 age range: TTS Team 3 - Tanglin Trust School, Singapore. Link to game. 10-11age range: TES BEARS 1, Taipei European School, Taiwan. Link to game. 8-9 age range: c h e e z y c h i p s, Bangkok Patana*, Thailand. Link to game. 12-13 age range: Traill Team Year8, Traill International School, Thailand. Link to game.
These are the list of winners with a special mention to the team at Traill International school who managed to create such a precise launch system, that when I saw the video of the submission, I honestly thought this was too short to be a higher-level entry. How wrong was I!
All round, what an amazing experience by all who supported their students and to the students themselves and their ingenuity.
*In light of fairness, this was an ECA that was organised and supported by a staff member who had nothing to do with the competition setup and only offered support with their time on the ECA. This was communicated with team leaders in the competition.
