yorkii wrote:

Also, a common misconception is that you have to pay to join our community.
This is completely untrue.

I think this comes from your sign-up instructions.

I'm interested, since I suck with output.

At what time should one show up if they want to check things out? And can one access the server outside of class times? I saw some (possibly outdated) answers to these questions on the enrollment page, but I would like confirmation.

sholum wrote:

I'm interested, since I suck with output.

At what time should one show up if they want to check things out? And can one access the server outside of class times? I saw some (possibly outdated) answers to these questions on the enrollment page, but I would like confirmation.

Thanks for the questions!

1. There are four class spots currently available:

* Cheapshot's 2 class times (US / AUS)
* Zerot class time (EU)
* Yukinose class time (US)

2. Yes, you are actively encouraged to access the server outside of class times.

The "paying for tuition" members of the community probably take up about 75% of the community, with the rest being either Japanese natives, or English speakers that just like to hang around with us.

Looking forward to seeing you in game.

Thanks yorkii! So it's like the Coursera/Udacity/et al. model, where you're free to use the resources and interact with professors & other students, but to get the certificate of achievement, you pay tuition. わかりました！

yorkii wrote:

[If you are a total beginner]

Not a total beginner but I will do both. Never understood Minecraft but this feels too much like the future to not be part of.

aldebrn wrote:

"can't this professor think of anything new?!"

"Well, yes, he can: you're learning Japanese in Minecraft." "! "

(Still astonished that this is finally happening. But since we're experimenting with new modes of education, it'd be great to retire the tired old horses [like interviews IMHO] and fill this new school with new exercises, which students will not want to cheat on.)

Last edited by aldebrn (October 02, 7:50 am)

Only a few days before classes now. I'll just add the "about us" page here for more information. (I think the tofugu article pretty much sums us up though.)

http://forums.kotobaminers.org/pages/About/

With the hope that all publicity is good publicity, here's my review/long summary of my experience with the first 1.5 classes. tl;dr as a tech-capable rank Minecraft beginner in the AJATT school of Japanese autodidactism, I had an unexpectedly great time with four other kohai, four or five sempai, and yorkii-sensei, and plan on continuing with Mineclass.

Apparently I was more excited than I thought because I forgot when the class was and showed up an 25 hours early, on Monday night 9pm instead of Tuesday at 10pm. I had watched the first two or three youtube walkthroughs corresponding to the outside and first couple of floors of the JP1 building, so I worked my way through the material there: greetings, phrases, and colors (never learned these). It took a bit of work because I don't know anything about Minecraft (except reading a long time ago how one could build a CPU in it---and I remember thinking, why Minecraft, what's wrong with VHDL, have people not heard about Nand2Tetris?). Edited my Minecraft account to use 1.7.9, tweaked down my graphics settings (I was stunned to learn that for being so blocky, Minecraft pegs a core to 90%), installed TeamSpeak.

A sempai on Teamspeak was kind enough to answer some questions about Minecraft and the class---he was there for the advanced class that had been meeting for eight months. He insisted I stick around for yorkii-sensei to show up; I did and was invited to "sit in" on the advanced class of about five, six students. They did a vocab memory-game warmup, i.e., split into two teams, first person in each says a animal/color/adjective, second person has to repeat it and add their own, and round the circle in ever-lengthening chains. Apparently an exercise that sensei uses in his IRL class. I may have been a distraction because I enjoyed flying, and people kept throwing CDs and jukeboxes in my path that I unwittingly kept picking up; sensei told me how I could place a jukebox on the ground and insert a CD into it to start some music. I didn't like it and attacked the jukebox but accidentally broke a bit of the floor . I logged out after half-hour, as they were wrapping up the exercise. Sensei was happy that I was doing RTK the sempai from earlier was surprised I was past half-way with RTK, and "knew" way more kanji than anyone in the advanced class. I guess that's what happens when you start learning Japanese after reading AJATT, you do things ass-backwards from everyone else

I was coming down with a cold so the next evening I wasn't even sure if I wanted to attend. Somehow I forced myself to do Anki reviews for the hour before class started instead of sleeping. Five new students including me showed up, along with four or five sempai! (a couple from the class the previous night). Having the sempai there was really cool and fun. One or two of the kohai were like me rank beginners. Sensei and sempai helped sort out Teamspeak best settings, how Minecraft equipment panes work, how to tweak graphics settings, etc.

We soon got to work, and went through the first floor of the JP1 building (I believe there are 7 buildings so far?), going over greetings and a guidebook with phrases like 「＿はどういういみですか？」 and 「＿は英語でなんですか」 with the new students reading aloud each sentences in turn. It was interesting to again experience that sensation where, on the first day of class, realizing that some students are way better than you (a couple of my fellow kohai had fabulous, enviable pronunciation). Certainly an unusual experience for me, having not felt that for these many years since grad school.

We also learned to use the Jisho dictionary and split up into pairs, one kohai with one sempai, to practice asking what something was in 英語・日本語 and Jisho lookups, by going into a different Teamspeak channel. I was paired up with the sempai I'd spoken to the day before, which was great. Teamspeak has a chat window built-in which is handy. Then the class regrouped in one Teamspeak channel and went outside to where some beds were and sensei made the sun go up and down to have us practice our お早うございます and おやすみなさい (telling us to right-click on the bed to actually lie down in them; it was a funny sight seeing ten beds with ten avatars lying down in them, saying おやすみなさい！ to each other ).

Then it was back inside JP1, second floor, to learn colors. Sensei elaborated on the signs to explain the difference between い-colors and の colors (あかい vs みどりの), answering many questions. During this whole time, keep in mind we're talking on Teamspeak but also sensei (and sempai) were constantly send text to the chat window, which I had luckily been able to figure out the previous day. Sensei mixes a LOT of Japanese into his speech, most of which I don't catch but can get the gist of. This is really good, but also frustrating because I feel like I'm letting a lot of valuable sentences, which could be (ahaha) mined for Anki, slip through my fingers. But I don't know if it can be helped without recording the lectures and laboriously relistening... even if sensei would be ok with that, I don't think I'd go that far for sentence mining. So I look on the bright side: learning by osmosis is better than not learning right, even if learning by Anki is better than osmosis. Still, I should compile a list of phrases that he says ("form one line") and ask on the Kotoba Miners forum for written versions. (I made use of that forum to clarify my understanding of the い/の colors, someone was very kind to answer my beginner question.)

Sensei showed us how to get out bows and arrows (I recognized the kanji for arrow but not bow ) and how to use them. You can guess how long I've been waiting to say "sensei had us get out our bows and arrows" and mean it. We split up into kohai-sempai pairs again, taking turns to shoot an object in the room and asking これわなにいろですか？ (what color is this) and the other person answering. This can get a little hectic when one's in a small-ish room with ten avatars shooting arrows all over the place, especially if you have some lag in the game. But this was a fun game. There are always, in any new system, things that you immediately recognize as revolutionary; but there are also many things that the community greets with a ho-humm or even scorn that nonetheless turn out to be really popular and valuable. I keep this in mind when I think of these games adapted for Mineclass (Minecraft class portmanteau): I don't yet know if they're going to be a big, big thing in next-gen education systems, but they're fun and interesting and new.

Third floor of JP1 building is foods and some more colors. Sensei also had us review some colors up here. Sempai chastised us for letting just one or two people answer all his questions :-/ practicing with Anki/Memrise allows you to take for granted the fact that there's no time limit for answering a card, so being asked to produce the Japanese word for "yellow" can produce a long gap even if you know you know it, a much longer gap than if there wasn't the pressure of an immediate response. I think conventional wisdom in second-language acquisition is that it's good to make students produce output like this: "what color is a banana?" "yellow". Being raised in the AJATT/Antimoon input-hypothesis school of thought, not to mention practicing with Anki/Memrise without a timer, this Output Now approach goes against my grain. But I am committed to empirical skepticism more than any ideology and am willing to try adjusting my attitude and practice methods, and practice producing answers quickly.

By now about ninety minutes had passed so we went outside to a special exercise area, splitting into two large groups. Each kohai took turns saying something in Japanese, 「わたしわアメリカじんです」 or 「ぶたわピンクです」 ("I'm american", or "Pigs are pink", which was mine), and everyone else would enter one of two areas, True or False. Then the person making the statement would hit one of two buttons, and everyone standing on the wrong answer would fall into a lava pit. You can imagine how many years I've waited to say, "I nearly fell into a lava pit in class today". I hesitate a lot when having to produce output like this: I rehearse it in my head, since I can't very well pause to write it down or consult notes, and say it slowly. I remembered reading an Antimoon essay whose author said the first email they wrote in a foreign language was a couple of sentences and took an hour to write, and that they were going for perfect accuracy from the start: simple is ok, wrong is not ok. But I make it a personal principle to live on both sides of internet flame wars (emacs and vim, check; kanji and grammar, check; roumaji and kana, check; input and output? painful but check), plus everyone else is having the same issue, and it's always fun to throw people into the lava pit, so I'm looking forward to doing more like this.

This wrapped up class. Two hours! Sensei gave us a login to Coursebase.com to coordinate assignments, etc. After class, the students (kohai and sempai) hung out for a few minutes chatting and reviewing one kohai's level. They were firm believers in the output model; I posted a link to Krashen's input hypothesis; nobody told me to go home they said it was interesting. May this group's tolerance and skepticism flourish and expand and consume the whole world!

I was ready to pass out so I got on the LINE group, tweeted sensei (don't think I remembered to say どうもありがとうございます！), and shut down.

I don't like classroom academic learning. Homework, exams, lectures I see as legacy code that needs a good rewrite: while I was going thru university and grad school to "master" one field, I was learning another field on the side, playing with it, not taking any classes in it but learning from masters as an apprentice. I vastly preferred the latter approach, and work professionally in that field now, while also doing it as a hobby. That said, Mineclass has novelty, panache, and of course yorkii-sensei's cool British accent. I'm willing to give the academy, so unusually disguised, another try!