GUIDE to LearnToMod TEACHER ACCOUNTS

Transcription

1 GUIDE to LearnToMod TEACHER ACCOUNTS ***** Welcome to your new LearnToMod Teacher Account! This guide will explain how to set up your classes and introduce some useful features and tools. CONTENTS 1 How to access your Teacher Account 2 Give students access to your class 3 Create a new class 4 Introducing your class roster 5 Adding/deleting students & updating info 6 About Minecraft and LearnToMod 7 Open & close your private server access 8 Keep track of students progress 9 Before your first class starts 10 Lesson plan ideas 10 More Resources 0

2 How to access your Teacher Account Log out of your LearnToMod account. A log out button can found at the top of every page. Then sign in at using your & password. Notice you now have a Classes tab at the top of the homepage. If you don t see it, please contact learntomod@thoughtstem.com because it s likely they activated a different address of yours. Clicking on the Classes tab shows all the classes you re currently running. Unless you request otherwise, you will automatically be set to run 1 class at time. This first class will be titled Seed Class at first. 1

3 Give students access to your class If you click on a class that s currently open, you ll find instructions on how to let students join your class. Each class will have a different Class Access Key. Tell your students to sign up at which should redirect them to Have them use the Sign Up field to create an account, using an address and password (not the access key). If possible, have them use a real address so they can recover their password later if they lose it. On the next screen, they ll enter the Class Access Key. Then, they ll enter a LearnToMod Nickname (this can be anything). Don t forget to give them the Class Access Key from your Class Control Panel! NOTE: See PG 10 for how to make dummy addresses for students. If you make dummy addresses for your students, you can write down their passwords to help them recover their accounts. 2

4 After creating their LearnToMod nickname, students will be directed to their homepage, and their name will appear in your Class Roster. They ll be able to start coding, unlocking badges and testing mods in the Simulator right away! But until you open the private server access, they will not be able to access their LearnToMod private Minecraft server. In the upper right corner of the page, they ll see server open or server closed. If your students have login issues or need help with the software, and switching or updating their browser doesn t fix the issue, let them know they can always contact support at learntomod@thoughtstem.com or they can post on the Forum. Create a new class To open a new class, press the Start a New Session button. A pop-up will ask you to enter a name for the new class session. Entering the class name will probably prompt another warning that starting a new class session will mean closing your current class. Right now Teacher Accounts can only, by default, run 1 class at a time unless you ask Customer Support (learntomod@thoughtstem.com) for more classes (Customer 3

5 Support happy to help with this!) If you only have access to run 1 class, when you start a new class session, you ll be closing your current class session. After you create a new class, your class will automatically be assigned a new Class Access Key. Remember, if students from your previous class need to join your new class, you ll need to provide them with the new class key, or else they won t be able to log in. Students that won t be returning to your class will be given the option, the next time they log in, to purchase a regular LearnToMod account. Students will be able to keep their badge progress between classes. They ll also be able to keep their badge progress if they choose to purchase a regular LearnToMod account. In the future, you will be able to view data from past class sessions, but this option is not currently available. Introducing your class roster Clicking on the Classes tab at the top of the page will bring you to a list of your current running classes. If you click on a certain class, you ll be directed to the Class Roster and Control Panel for that class. 4

6 At the top of the page will be the following: the Class Access Key, the teacher s account name, # of remaining student seats & info about your server access status. We ll come back to the control buttons underneath later. Below the Control Panel buttons, you ll see a Roster of all students LearnToMod accounts currently enrolled in your class. Students can only be enrolled in your class if you yourself add them to the class, using the Add Student feature described below, or if a student enters your class access key when they set up their LearnToMod account. Adding/Deleting Students & updating info After a student has created their account and joined your class, their basic account information will appear in your Class Roster: their , Minecraft username, LearnToMod nickname, and how many badges they ve unlocked. You ll be able to edit some of their information. If a student wants to change their LearnToMod username, you can do that for them by clicking the blue pen icon next to their LearnToMod username. You can also click [reset password] if a student has lost their password. Adding and deleting students from your class is easy. To delete a student, press the trash icon by their name in the Roster list. To add new students, simply them personally with the access key and sign in instructions. You can also add students that have existing LearnToMod accounts! To do this, click on + student and a popup will prompt you to enter their LearnToMod account or LearnToMod nickname. 5

7 If you have a long list of students with LearnToMod accounts to invite, you can select + student.csv and upload a.csv file (the file uploaded must match the format in the popup). About Minecraft and LearnToMod When you go to the Learn tab on the LearnToMod homepage, the first badge students can earn is the Minecraft Connect badge, which connects a user s LearnToMod account to their Minecraft account. After a student has unlocked their Minecraft Connect badge (and inputted their Minecraft username in step 3), their Minecraft username will appear in your Class Roster list next to their other account information. Each LearnToMod account requires a unique Minecraft username. While doing the Minecraft Connect badge, if LearnToMod senses that you are entering a Minecraft username entered previously by another user, it will erase that Minecraft username from the other user s account, so that you can use it. This feature is important to understand for teachers with several classes of students who are sharing a single set of Minecraft usernames, as is common. At the start of each class, students will need to re-enter their Minecraft usernames, if a student from a different class has been using that Minecraft username. At the beginning of class just direct students to the Minecraft Connect badge this step doesn t take more than a minute, and you ll students will be able to access their servers again! 6

8 NOTE: We understand that not all teachers are able to use Minecraft in their classrooms, whether because getting enough accounts for the class is too expensive or because the school s wi-fi blocks the game and the school s tech support isn t helping. This is one of the reasons we included the Minecraft simulator in LearnToMod. This simulator allows students to test their mods in a Minecraft look-alike without ever leaving the LearnToMod website. However, keep in mind that the Simulator can t render certain blocks and entities yet. Therefore, you may need to skip some badges where blocks aren t renderable yet, as well as the Run Your First Mod badge. Open & close your private server access To open private server access for your students, click the Open Server Access button on your Class Control Panel: The countdown, viewable on the Control Panel, will start when you turn the servers on. Your class private server status will say Opened. Your students will see if their private servers are currently open by checking the upper right-hand corner of any LearnToMod webpage. The default server time limit is 2 hours of access a day per class; but, if your classes or camps run longer than 2 hours, ask Customer Support (learntomod@thoughtstem.com) to extend server access time for your classes. NOTE: Don t open your server access until your class is ready to run mods. They won t be able to enter their private LearnToMod server until you open the server access, and their server access will run out when the countdown hits 0:00. To close or pause your classes server access, press the Close Server Access button. ANOTHER NOTE: Students private Minecraft servers are private; they are not class servers that hold all the students in a single Minecraft world. However, all users can invite their friends/classmates to join their world. For instructions on how to invite other users to your private server, see PG 10. 7

9 Keep track of students progress When the class is well underway, you ll want to check your students status. On the Class Roster page, you can view how many badges each student has completed (their badge score is the number next to their LearnToMod nickname), or you can see the code they ve written by clicking on the View Class Programs button. On this page, you will see all the mods your students have written so far, how long ago (in parenthesis), and how many lines of code are in the mod. On this page, students are designated by their LearnToMod nickname. Clicking on the title of a student s mod will take you to the code they ve written: There s also a filter tool on this page. If you assign a certain number of lines of code to be written during class, you can enter that number into the filter and if there are students that haven t written more lines of code than you set in the filter, their LearnToMod nicknames on this page will be marked in red. 8

10 Before your first class starts þ Double check that your classroom setup meets LearnToMod s technical requirements. More information about technical requirements can be found here: þ Test the software and run a few test mods in your classroom, to make sure LearnToMod is compatible with your school s wi-fi and computers. Test your mods in Minecraft if you plan to have your students use Minecraft. þ Complete the first badges if you haven't already, which will explain how to connect to Minecraft and how to write and run your first mod. Try one or two of the scramble and missing type badges too, as these are trickier for students. þ Make sure you try out the Simulator. You may need to manually download the plugin, Unity Web Player, the first time you use the simulator. If it doesn t download automatically, you can get the plugin here: If you have Linux operating systems, contact Customer Support (learntomod@thoughtstem.com) for additional help. NOTE: To use the Simulator, press the Simulator button and follow the instructions on the screen. If the screen is black, that means you haven t downloaded the plugin yet. And remember, there are certain blocks and entities the Simulator can t render yet. þ Familiarize yourself with the Freeplay Modding area, where students can write their own code: 9

11 Lesson plan ideas Check out the LearnToMod blog for Lesson Plan ideas: We have a special series for teachers that we post every Monday and Thursday that we hope will inspire your lesson plans. You can also take advantage of the Youtube videos we make for these blog posts on our Youtube channel for Educators: Also, take advantage of LearnToMod s Build Your Own Badges feature, a feature that allows teachers to build their own custom badge sequences: In the future, we plan to have a way for teachers to share lesson plans with each other through a public library of lesson plans. Right now the easiest way for teachers to share badge sequences with students or other teachers is by ing them the URL (as demonstrated in the following video: ). More Resources Have a question about LearnToMod? Browse our FAQ page for solutions to your problem ( ), use the feedback form on the LearnToMod website (upper right-hand corner), post to the Forum ( or Customer Support at learntomod@thoughtstem.com. Trying to set up Dummy Accounts? Each LearnToMod account needs a unique address. Without parental permission, it's illegal for a student under 13 to have an account. We recommend the following tutorial for teachers setting up dummy accounts for students, which are not directly accessible by students, but are accessible by the teacher: Inviting other Minecraft users to a LTM user s private world? Type the command /open once you've been transferred to your server. Then, you'll see some additional instructions, telling you to have your friend join the hub server at play.learntomod.com. The text will say: "You have opened your server. Tell your friends to join play.learntomod.com and run the command /join ##" The ## is a number that will automatically be assigned to you. Then type in the /join <server number> command you see. 10

12 Keep in mind that 4 is the recommended amount of people per private server, and 10 is the hard limit. The servers aren't designed for more than 4, so anything above that will probably have side effects of lag. If this doesn't work, redo the Minecraft Connect badge, making sure that you selected Multiplayer mode. 11