Our Education System

[PNWMan]

I'll get straight to the point- Our education system has declined, and needs some serious reforms (or at the very least some direction telling newcomers where to go and how to get started learning, not just applying). The recent announcement about removing certain trialing standards (https://forum.openredstone.org/showthread.php?tid=10233) inspired me to make this post.

ORE as it used to be: There were an abundance of willing teachers and builders willfully teaching students the concepts they needed to be successfull, and there was an abundance of self-directed student learning and group projects going on. Sure, it wasn't perfect, students still got ignored and thrown around, but at least we had some actual learning and productiveness going on.

ORE as it is now: An absolute lack of willing teachers, myself included; teachers are bored of teaching the same lesson over and over again when there are already tutorials somewhere. Students are lost, many get ignored, there is hardly any productiveness or group projects going on (I found group projects to be the best learning experience for students). Not all is dim and dismal, though, there are still many students who pass the trial, and many students who have a lot of insight and qualities we love to see.

ORE as it should be (according to my viewpoint, which I am open to change as long as you can provide some good insight and elaboration): I think that teachers are mostly done for, it's really true. Active teachers would be nice to have and an ideal situation, but it's pretty much hopeless at this point; we need something different. Not many people are willing to take time out to give a quality lesson on something they might have already taught before, or is already out there in a tutorial, or that they might feel will be wasted on a particular student, or that they are too tired to teach.

We need a good collection of updated, complete, and well-delivered tutorials (preferably video), whether from outsiders or from the ORE community. We need a single place that students (and even builders; this tutorial base should be pretty extensive) can go to find links to these tutorials, probably a forum post or some signs at spawn or the POL, or something. Of course, this collection can be built up over time, and hopefully will encourage updated tutorials to be made. These tutorials need to be pretty in-depth, but not overwhelming (maybe have a basic as well as advanced tutorials for various subjects?). If students have questions after watching, they can ask a builder for help (with these new reforms, builders should be more prepared and knowledgeable).

This will relieve a massive amount of pressure as lessons will not often have to be given, instead, just a few questions may need to be answered, and students will understand. And keep in mind that often times, I've found that I have understood something better after teaching someone or after trying to figure out the answer to a question someone asked that I might not have known myself. This means don't be afraid to take some time to help students because you might actually learn something yourself (as well as become a better teacher)

The teacher rank should be removed (a sacrifice I'm willing to make since I am one) since being a builder should mean having the responsibility of helping students answer the questions they have. With the relief of pressure for long and exhausting lessons and more prepared builders because of trial reforms, hopefully builders will be more willing to take just a bit of time to help a student, and maybe learn something themselves and become better at teaching. Think of teaching not as a burden, but as a privilege and a chance to prove to yourself how much you really know. Even if you are not familiar with a subject (or have not taught or used a subject for nearly 2 years, in my case), you should still be willing to try to help a student. Why should a student be rejected learning just because there a bunch of builders on but no teachers?

Why we should make these reforms: I'm not saying that staff need to do everything I say, that would be incredibly narcissistic of me. Maybe sometimes I need to work on seeing both sides and being more open (many of us do). But we can all agree that there are some things that need to be sorted out, and we all want to see staff take some action on this. And it's not incredibly hard, either! I mean, these changes could be put in place in like a day or two, and then be put into practice for a few days, and we can see how things go and fix anything that needs to be fixed. Let's not work out great solutions on the forums just to have them simmer and rot, let's actually put them into practice. Staff, putting forth some effort now means an easier time later on. Yes, maybe it's not fun to make reforms and update stuff, but it will be worth it. Think how great it will be once you put forth that effort!

ORE is absolutely one of the best communities out there: Staff actually listen to the community, so much attention is given to how we can improve our server, and we all genuinely care, even if we are a bit lazy sometimes. I mean, we are such a great community that people stick around even though they haven't done redstone in years! Besides the amazing redstone innovations we have discovered and invented over the years, the community is highly productive and amazing! Please, post any comments, questions or concerns, and hopefully we can all work out a solution to fix one of ORE's largest issues.

[newomaster]

"I mean, we are such a great community that people stick around even though they haven't done redstone in years!" - PNWman - That's me

My two-cents on this matter:
1: With the new trial system in place, knowledgeable students will be more important. One way or another they will have to learn.
2: I'm not sure how the school server is operating now, so take my next ideas lightly:
3: To remove some of burden off "teaching the same thing over and over" (which, mind you, as someone who taught a lot while I was active, I didn't mind teaching adders many many many times. I treated it as a fun puzzle to figure out how the student learned and adapt my strategies to fit their needs best) why don't we regularize the lessons, saying x lesson is happening at y time at z's plot. That way we can have groups of people learn from the same lesson. It would be almost.. you know... more like a... school?
4: A set ORE curriculum may be helpful. Videos especially. Maybe we could reboot the ORE yt channel?
5: Maybe we could integrate school into the build (something I've advocated a lot in the past) this would put the students and builders into contact more instead of isolating them.
6: What about hosting official group projects where a group of 1-3 students work with a builder or two on a real redstone project? We could call them "Internships" or something #newoideas

[slugdude]

6: What about hosting official group projects where a group of 1-3 students work with a builder or two on a real redstone project? We could call them "Internships" or something #newoideas

I kinda skim-read most of this thread but actually I really like this idea and shouldn't be hard to implement, just add a student rank to build server, they can't claim plots, can't WE, but can build on a plot that a builder owns when they add them.

There could be some limitations though, this kinda needs the builder to trust the student which may not end well, and the student should have enough knowledge to keep along with the builder, and the builder should explain than he/she's doing to student preferable via voice chat.

If these roadblocks could be removed I could imagine this kind of system working quite well.

[TuchiTheSalt]

My two-cents on this matter:
1: With the new trial system in place, knowledgeable students will be more important. One way or another they will have to learn.
2: I'm not sure how the school server is operating now, so take my next ideas lightly:
3: To remove some of burden off "teaching the same thing over and over" (which, mind you, as someone who taught a lot while I was active, I didn't mind teaching adders many many many times. I treated it as a fun puzzle to figure out how the student learned and adapt my strategies to fit their needs best) why don't we regularize the lessons, saying x lesson is happening at y time at z's plot. That way we can have groups of people learn from the same lesson. It would be almost.. you know... more like a... school?
4: A set ORE curriculum may be helpful. Videos especially. Maybe we could reboot the ORE yt channel?
5: Maybe we could integrate school into the build (something I've advocated a lot in the past) this would put the students and builders into contact more instead of isolating them.
6: What about hosting official group projects where a group of 1-3 students work with a builder or two on a real redstone project? We could call them "Internships" or something #newoideas

I think the idea of having lessons at a specific time and place is a good idea but the issue is not everyone can make it due to time zones etc. 
I would really love for the ORE YouTube to be reborn because at the moment its doing jack shit and I would love to see the channel posting stuff like tutorials and cool ass builds. There isn't really an excuse for not uploading due to lack of ideas because there is a forum thread filled with cool build people have made. 
Now that the school stuff is changing i am open for school to merge with the build but wouldn't that make build more laggy? along with the fact there isn't a backup server if one of them goes down? 
The idea about group projects needs to be added but for everyone, Nickster(i think) had an idea for something like a project Euler where you receive problems but in minecraft. Id love something like this because you can just pick something new to test your skills every so often and it would be good for students to be challenged with things other then making an ALU .

[Mar_Win]

ORE Youtube Channel Hype!
This rusty thing really needs to find his way back to life with tutorials and showcases. As if we wouldn't have cool builds on here. ^^

These roadblocks as sluggy called them are easy to get rid of imo by creating extra plots, where these group works may take place.

Taking the term "class" more literal and starting group lessons is a cool idea, but I'm not too sure if that will really help. If a look back at myself in school, when the teacher asked "are there questions" and noone said it. meh.

We have the resources for personal lessons and imo they are more effective.

[Nickster258]

It would actually be really nice if members of the community could pitch in and make the videos actually.

Imagine a tutorial series, but each time someone different is teaching said principle. These videos would be posted to the Open Redstone account, or posted individually and then "Sponsored by Open Redstone" or something. Then we would just throw the videos into a playlist.

Just a thought, since I 1) Don't think I am qualified anymore to properly teach mechanics 2) Really hate making videos.

[PNWMan]

Here's a recap of all the issues going on so far, and various ideas of what might happen:

(1)Merging School and Build: We discussed integrating School and Build into one server 2 years ago (https://forum.openredstone.org/showthread.php?tid=4043). I think that school and build do need to be more closely integrated as far as teaching goes, even if they are still 2 separate servers or worlds. Although it was discussed on some previous threads I made, at this point I just don't see school and build being merged into the same physical world (it was not a popular choice anyways), and I don't think it would be a good idea. Tuchi did point out that there would not be a backup server to join if one of them were to go down, if build and school were to be merged. Also discussed was how chat would be merged. Keep in mind that as of now, separate chatrooms have been voted against and I think the current system is the best solution (although maybe sometimes chat needs to be separated more often than it is)

(2)Website Guides: When reforms get put in place, the website guides need some updating so newcomers can have some direction and know exactly what is going on and what they should do.


(3)Tutorials: As for tutorials, some ideas were revamping the ORE YouTube account. Also, individual builders could post videos on their own accounts or just a text/pictures post on the forum. There would be a forum post or something with a list of all of the tutorials so students could easily access it instead of builders individually having to dole out links.

(4)Scheduled Lessons: With a large database of tutorials, the number of lessons will be greatly decreased, however still existent. Newo suggested we have regularized/scheduled lessons, but Tuchi pointed out how that might not work so well because of timezones and and stuff. Lessons should obviously not all be required to be scheduled, but it would be nice if there was a place where builders could put in an appointment should they so desire. Then, students go to that list (a forum post, a sign area on school?) and can know when and where to be to learn about something. But I don't think students should need to sign up; it's just an advertisement of lesson that will be taught.

(5)Internships: As with internships, I think we really need to try them out to be able to figure out if they would work or not. If successful, they would be a great way for students to not only gain knowledge but experience, and learn how to work with others and solve problems. However, I do see builders taking over the project. Also to be decided upon is whether they should take place on school or build, and if they take place on build, how should students be allowed to build? I like slug's idea about no claiming and no WE, but they can be added to a builder's plot. Also, who would organize these things; how would they be initiated?

(6)Teachers: I did say that the Teacher rank should be removed since it should be put upon Builders to answer Students' questions and possibly do internships. It has already been discussed at https://forum.openredstone.org/showthread.php?tid=6473. However, upon consideration, what if instead of applying and trialing for Teacher or removing it altogether, it could be awarded to Builders who demonstrated outstanding willingness to teach and who were good at it? Just like Moderator and Staff nominations, we could nominate and vote for Teachers? However, instead of certain Builders "winning" the election by getting the most votes like for Staff and Moderator, you would just need a certain amount of votes to gain the rank. Voters could have one vote per person but could vote for as many people as they thought deserved it.

(7)Trials: We already have the trial reform in place to encourage creativity and innovation (which needs a reformed education system to really work, as Mar_Win pointed out), but also discussed in the past was if students should be able to do their trial on their own time, and Builders could help them with WE. The Testificate could start/stop the trial on their own time, and then when a staff/mod was available they could judge the build and question the Testificate.

(8)Implementations: I have seen a lot of really great ideas and insight on the forums here, and in the past, which shows just how intelligent and caring our community is. Our only problem is that we don't like to take action to put in place what we said should be. What we need is a much more definitive system of implementing ideas that the community and staff thinks are good ideas. I will make a poll that includes ALL of these topics and various opinions on each one. I'll put it in the school discussion so I'm not colonizing the build discussion section, and so more students will be encouraged to vote on these matters (their input matters, too!) See below for the link. Then staff can decide on what they want to do, and then various implementation solutions should be discussed between them. Might I recommend a to-do page on the staff forum (that exists, right?) that shows current progress on issues. I don't want to elevate myself to ORE ruler, telling staff what to do; I'm just giving ideas and a plan I think will work so we can actually get something done.

Vote at: https://forum.openredstone.org/showthread.php?tid=10281
Current issues that builders and staff need to decide and take action upon are:
*Should school and build be merged, and how so? (1)
-How should chat be merged? (1)
*How will the website guides be updated? (2)
*How will students learn redstone? (3, 4, 5, & 6)
-Where will tutorials be, and where would the list of them be? (3)
-Where will students go to find out about scheduled lessons? (4)
-How would internships be initiated? (5)
-Where would internships take place, and how will permissions be adjusted? (5)
-What should we do with the Teacher rank? (6)
*How should trials be reformed? (7)
-Should students be able to trial on their own time? (7)
*When and how should we take action? (8)

[Koyarno]

The willingness to teach was there when we got the teacher rank. That was the main reason to become one. And yes it gets really boresome to teach students the same topic when they eventually don't progress further and i'm getting sadder each time. It costs us alot of effort to teach and there is not this equal return of feedback from the students.

Classes do not work because the time of understanding a concept between students lies far apart. This is caused mainly by the age difference. You do not want to wait another half an hour just because a individual took a bit longer and feels pressurized to understand it.

However, classes that explain the more advanced concepts would require students to already understand the basic topics first, or maybe something more. This stuff is also more specific, so classes are maybe not the best option here anyway.

The only way i see it work is a proper youtube tutorial with a physical plot that they can look up. Just like modern way of education; learn the material yourself and if you don't understand it, ask a teacher about what part you did not understand (like which youtube video; how far in). As a teacher, ask the student if they can use discord as a bonus.

Now for the credibility of the teacher rank:
1. no teacher knows everything - and what the teacher trialed for is not visible
2. no builder knows everything
So what exactly does a teacher rank say REALLY about someones skill? Not much. I waited a long time to eventually get a teacher rank, other builders might feel this way too.

Either we abandon the teacher rank or we standardize trial regulations. I feel someone with that rank should be able to teach you
- 2's complement (negative binary systems)
- Carry look ahead (generate, propagate carry logic)
- Control Unit / Instruction decoder
something along that line

Also i feel that a moderator who does trials shouldn't teach or to a lesser extent trial the person that the moderator taught before.
You are NOT JUDGE & EXECUTIONER, that is not how regulation works.

[Israphel]

If we reward teachers for teaching, they will have a reason to teach the same thing over and over(or other things), but I don't know what would be given that they already don't have.

[Mar_Win]

Hey guys here just some comments on pnwmanspost. Sorry in advance for the length of the following post.


To (1): I don't really see the advantages of merging school and build, because the only way of students interacting with builders are lessons. Merging the two servers won't change that. However, it will result in a more crowded server, private chat spams and tps. Studentplots and buildplots must be seperated imo, which is possible, but also connected to more work. BetaRedstone merged the learners and the builders map and imo it is confusing. 
On the other hand the idea of two seperate servers brings some cool possibilities, like specialized plugins, which are discussed in other threads, or special ranks. In general I think the two separated servers principle is a good way od keeping things organized and clear. All in all merging the servers won't result in a huge change for the users, but it will rule out some cool ideas and concepts in the future. 

To (2): This should be normal imo. Maybe we should open a sub-forum, which is dedicated to the current system of ORE. In this sub-forum we should explain the current system adding the new reforms as early as possible, which will help not only newcomers, but also guys returning from a break to understans whats going on here. Also I'd like to have the staffs work a little bit more transparent. By that I mean that there will be a protocol of each "staffmeeting", which wil be posted public. That shall not end in endless referenda, but it shall keep us up to date. Staff rules, we control and participate via voting. 

To (3): Reactivating the ORE youtube channel is sorely needed. We have good tutorials by even better builders from this server, but the students can't access them easily. By organizing the ORE youtube channel with the use of playlists we can create a huge video library, which is easy to use for any student. I don't know the limits of bottery, but introducing a /learn [topic] command, which results in a link to the corresponding video(s).

To (4): Gotta agree with koyarno here. Also I think the amount of obstacles, which lie in the way of scheduled lessons is too damn high. (Timezones, skilllevels, timezones in combination with useramount, interest and of courss timezones).

To (5): I think special intershipplots would ease things up, because the studend can be given full world edit access without any risks. Furthermore the student, who wants to do an intership won't destroy the build on purpose. Otherwise the intership is finished.
The forums offer a great way to ask for interships by stating the goal and the time of it. Of course builders should be able to offer interships on their own as well.

To (6): gotta agree with koyarno again. I dont think we should get rid of the teacher rank, but making it easier to get. Koyarno stated some basic stuff every teacher should know to get the teacher rank. Maybe we could include bottery to provide additional information about the teachers expertise by doing ,teacher [ign]

To (7): same opinion. 

To (8): People always keep saying that staff members are lazy bums. The mentioned protocols would show us what really happens behind the scenes. 

Would like to hear your opinions on that ^^

Edit: we shouldn't reward teachers imo. A reward is not the motivation to become a teacher. Also to me a student understanding something or even passing the trial is a reward.

[MW3_587786]

I think I'll pitch in and make a video. I have a decent microphone (Blue Yeti) and a good screen recorder, so it should be a pretty high quality video. Imma make one on binary I guess and make it unlisted.

[josh03222]

I think I'll pitch in and make a video. I have a decent microphone (Blue Yeti) and a good screen recorder, so it should be a pretty high quality video. Imma make one on binary I guess and make it unlisted.

Don't bump you fucken kumquat

[MW3_587786]

owell it'll be live here https://youtu.be/2wphbSzzQ58

[Matthew]

"I mean, we are such a great community that people stick around even though they haven't done redstone in years!" - PNWman - That's me

My two-cents on this matter:
1: With the new trial system in place, knowledgeable students will be more important. One way or another they will have to learn.
2: I'm not sure how the school server is operating now, so take my next ideas lightly:
3: To remove some of burden off "teaching the same thing over and over" (which, mind you, as someone who taught a lot while I was active, I didn't mind teaching adders many many many times. I treated it as a fun puzzle to figure out how the student learned and adapt my strategies to fit their needs best) why don't we regularize the lessons, saying x lesson is happening at y time at z's plot. That way we can have groups of people learn from the same lesson. It would be almost.. you know... more like a... school?
4: A set ORE curriculum may be helpful. Videos especially. Maybe we could reboot the ORE yt channel?
5: Maybe we could integrate school into the build (something I've advocated a lot in the past) this would put the students and builders into contact more instead of isolating them.
6: What about hosting official group projects where a group of 1-3 students work with a builder or two on a real redstone project? We could call them "Internships" or something #newoideas

#newoideas...................................................... *head explodes*

[TuchiTheSalt]

The sad thing is I don't see any staff responding to this thread, I think the main issue is there's no motivation in the staff to enforce these changes even though it will benefit the server greatly ;-;

[Nickster258]

The sad thing is I don't see any staff responding to this thread, I think the main issue is there's no motivation in the staff to enforce these changes even though it will benefit the server greatly ;-;

There honestly isn't. I was participating in these "fix" threads a month or so back and tried to push for it by sparking discussion, but it never happened.

We need elections again.

[josh03222]

The sad thing is I don't see any staff responding to this thread, I think the main issue is there's no motivation in the staff to enforce these changes even though it will benefit the server greatly ;-;

There honestly isn't. I was participating in these "fix" threads a month or so back and tried to push for it by sparking discussion, but it never happened.

We need elections again.

[tokumei]

I have also been a big supporter/pusher of things when notice a thread like this. And it's true that our staff is lazy; I've made quite a few discussion threads that have never been replied to in the staff forum.

[PNWMan]

I think the forums need a sweep-over a couple of times to search for old ideas that were forgotten about but might still have some relevance.

Also, this is a bit late, but earlier Mar_Win mentioned the idea of separate plots for internships where apprentices have WE instead of builders just inviting apprentices to their plots. This might be a good idea so apprentices are less likely to grief other projects on a builder's plot. Then after the internship is completed or has timed out, the plot can be reopened for another internship (in which the builder might delete the old project or scoot it away, or whatever they want to do with it). If we are giving apprentices WE and internships privileges, I think each apprentice should have a maximum amount of internships they can participate in to encourage them to not use internships as an excuse to build on the build server.

I'd just like to say hats off to nick and nonemu because from what I have seen, they have been the most active and helpful admins recently. I've also seen qwer and crazy helping out, good job guys!

[TuchiTheSalt]

Im not sure who operated(or used to operate) the official YouTube but I'm sure many people are willing(including me) to make tutorials and videos for the channel, and I think that would be a good starting point for further changes as well as being in more people

[Koyarno]

Iirc it was jeremy who made atleast the spotlight vids, maybe he knows more about the channel.