Blog 6

Our group is closing up our Minecraft project. After many long hours of mashing the right click button, we have finally made JLS come to life in the game. We have finished the portables (810-840), as well as the pool, tennis courts, bike cages, and the entirety of the new building. Anyone who has a Minecraft account can come take a look (Finally). The IP address is : mine.boseahmad.com

Over the many weeks, we've learned that communication and teamwork is key when creating a project like this. If one member of the project is going to create something, then the other team members will have to know what the layout of the creation will be like, being able to assist in the creation of many of the buildings of JLS. One of our biggest issues was scale and the fact that there aren't any diagonals in Minecraft less than 45 degrees. For scale, we measured for a while until we realized that an estimate would work just as well, sometimes even better (As if each block is one meter, then your character is two meters, which is 6 feet 6 inches). For the diagonals, we simply changed it so everything was a rectangle on an XY axis, making all the buildings following a right angle pattern. I really think that this project was something that couldn't have been completed without everyone working as hard as they could. I'd like to thank Anthony, Kyle, Eric, and Zakir (that way no one knows who wrote this blog) for working really hard with me on this project. One of those names is double stated.

THE FINAL PRODUCT IS HERE!

Aerial View #1

Aerial View #2 (Pool included)

Aerial View #3 (We changed Leadership=Swag to just Leadership)

Aerial View #4 (The buildings that were supposed to be slanted are now perpendicular with the other buildings)

Blog 5

This week, we have made a tremendous amount of progress.  The world is starting to look like JLS.  We have been using the /fill (fills a rectangular area of a certain substance) and the /clone (duplicates an area and pastes it somewhere else) commands to speed up the process.  We have finished from the flagpole to the 300s wing, as well as most of the Gym (all we need is the ceiling).  We have been working really hard in and outside of class, pausing only to post messages around the school (i.e. LEADERSHIP = SWAG).  This week, we hope to set up the bios of the staff, finish up to the 600s, wing, finish the gym, contact Mr. Sperry about putting it on the JLS Website, outline the thousands islands, and start the directions to the different classrooms.  It will be an action packed week, and it will leave us with only the finishing touches to complete.  Next week, we hope to share a complete and explorable model of JL Stanford Middle School.

Blog 4

This week, we have FINALLY made a bit of progress on the outline, after encouraging all group members to work every day on the Minecraft world. We have finished the Cafe, the 100's wing, the breezeway, and the 200's wings, we have made all of it using a material called Stone, but if we use a plugin called WorldEdit, we can change all the stone to the appropriate material. Last week was a disaster in terms of progress, but this week, our group really began pumping the motor, and actually working on the world, rather than messing around. We have discovered that adding details is actually harder than we expected, because each block is square, and there are not many specific blocks for our situation. We have learned to ALL pitch in a bit on Blogs, the Minecraft world itself, and the Website. From here, we will hopefully finish the outline of JLS by next Tuesday (Thanksgiving Break) and start adding specific details, and changing the stone materials to the appropriate materials. We have really learned a lot about JLS, because we explored many rooms that we have never gone too before, just for the sake of our project. We hope to finish the 330-360 and 300-320 rooms before the end of the week. Our website is getting polished up, with other features being added, such as certain guides to rooms and things.  Hopefully we can keep up the pace, and finish the project on time!

Link to the website : http://explorejls.weebly.com/

Aerial view of JLS so far.

Halfway completed Office Hallway

230-260s wing

The starting point of exploration (JLS Flagpole)

Post 3

Blog 3: Leadership 20% Time Project: Virtual World

As the week passes, we complete more and more milestones on our Minecraft world. First, we have completed most of the outlines for the Cafe, the 130's wing, and a little bit of the office. With this, we have to keep in mind no to get off of scale. For items smaller than one meter, we try to treat them as if they were one meter, because there is no way to create something that is 1/2 a block. For example, for a doorway entrance, (which, obviously, is less than one meter thick) we simply treat it as one block of width and make the rest of the room according to scale. It is unfortunate, but there is no way around the limitations of the Minecraft block. By next week, we want to finish up the office, library, and 230-260s. Since these are outlines, many of the lengths stay the same. We measured that the space between wings vertically (Like from 530 to 430) is always 13 blocks long. These things are constant, so we don't have to measure the entirety of JLS. That being said, we still have to devote a certain amount of time to measuring around the areas that aren't very constant, like the library, gymnasium, etc. We have learned to construct the basic outline of a JLS classroom. Since most are the same length, we can make one, and using its dimensions, create more and more. One of the issues that we haven't exactly solved yet is how we can show diagonals/curves inside Minecraft. While yes, you can place blocks from corner to corner, that angle is too drastic for areas, and we need a more subtle angle. We have also fully completed the building where a student would spawn when first entering a game, but we haven't been able to actually change the world so that all entrances into the

world start at that building.

The Cafeteria (somewhat unfinished)

The breezeway 

The spawn point

Unfinished Room 140

Post 2

Blog 2: Leadership 20% Time Project : Virtual World

                     With the end of the week, we have managed to find out most if not all of the length ratios needed for JLS. Since each block is 1 meter, we used meter sticks and measured certain areas of JLS that stayed relatively the same. We also have created the flagpole as the central point of exploration, as all students should be able to recognize the JLS flagpole.We are working on a way to make a spawn point inside the air and have the visitor drop from that point down onto the JLS school grounds, giving them a nice aerial view on the way down. We've learned how to work together on the server to coordinate where to place blocks. I've learned that controlling oneself from blowing up 3x3 blocks of stone with TnT is not the most product use of time and that it doesn't benefit the project. Using time effectively is an important skill and can will determine whether or not we can finish this project. From here, we can begin to plan out the outlines of all the buildings, creating walls and making separate rooms. Also, we can add a few details here or there to make things easier to find and notice.

Blog 1

Our goals at this moment, is to collect measurements of the school, and start building the base for our virtual world, probably not getting into details at this point. We also need to step up, because without Mods or Plugins (See Learning about the Project) we have to set each block down Brick by Brick, which can be time-consuming. We will measure progress, by setting a goal of one wing of classrooms per week, unless there is no time during the week to work on the project.We are learning more about our school, and learning more about using "Mods and Plugins" for the project, Mods and Plugins, are downloadable extras, that could help us use commands to help us work on our world.
We are learning NOT to mess around with the fun game Minecraft, which is practicing our self-control, and we are learning how to assign jobs in the project, and work as a team. In a month, we will hopefully have finished the basic shape of JLS, in the second month, hopefully have the details all put in.