Reflecting on a Minecraft tutorial

For make cycle #1, I made a Minecraft tutorial called “4 ways to write in Minecraft.”

My process began with the inspiration prompted by the newsletter that launched the make cycle. (A make cycle is the amorphous unit of organization in our massive online collaboration.) Chris Butts and Rachel Bear, the facilitators of this week and co-authors of the newsletter, reminded me that how-to guides are everywhere and I liked the notion that I might introduce my interests by creating a tutorial. I immediately thought of one of my favorite tutorials which I’ve embedded below, in which Kulopto, a youthful sounding YouTuber, demonstrates how to make different logic gates using the blocks in the game to create circuits. I like how he begins by listing objectives for the video and advice for players hoping to develop proficiency creating circuits. He pays attention to audience by soliciting comments about the video, prompting commenters to tell him how the video could be better. In the pop up annotations, he even tries to redirect his invisible audience by advising them to stop saying that the circuits he makes aren’t advanced. The video below illustrates how seriously youth take their how-tos on YouTube and also shows the complexity of the things they teach each other, and the world really, using the popular sandbox game Minecraft.

Like Kulopto, I tried to make a video that would be useful for an audience of educators and parents. I aimed to show quickly the different ways I’ve seen to write in Minecraft. Since I was presenting four ways to write, I wanted those ways visible before I modeled them so I set up the chest with a book, the sign, the blocks in the sky and the chat transcript before I shot my screencast. After three or four rough takes I completed the video, a little long but effective.

 

The success of the tutorial for me is really determined by the network interaction around the video. To date it has 28 views and the comments below the video (pictured above) show that the topic resonated with five educators who commented. While that number five can seem small in a “massive” online collaboration, I spent a while on the video and having five people respond positively almost right away reminds me about the value of sharing and reminds me that the audience for the things I make in #clmooc is comprised of actual thoughtful educators.