MC:EE Updates & The Community involvement
Hello!
I wanted to bring up something that myself and a ton of other teachers and mentors are feeling. The forums for Education Edition are great, and a step in the right direction. But I do not believe it is enough.
Many teachers love using MC in their classrooms, and therefore you guys get a ton of feedback from a lot of different places. Although we can post all of it here, the most of a confirmation we get that it was seen was a reply of "Thank you for your feedback."
I know you guys are busy people, and I'm sure that the developers see at least some of the suggestions and bug posts, but there seriously needs to be a way to track what was actually added and what is being thought about. I've suggested something like Trello in the past, which would allow mentors and creators to see that their ideas actually mean something when they show up on the board.
There are still many bugs from the early days of EE that we have reported, and time and time again it's thanks for the feedback without actually ever getting fixed or even a sign it's being worked on.
All we are asking for is a better way to actually be involved. We want to help EE grow and see it succeed. But the way it is being worked on makes it seem like the developers push an update every couple months and go on vacation. (Obviously this is not happening, but it gets the point across).
And the most ridiculous part of this mess is that, every single other version of Minecraft has a tracker. Every Version. Why not EE? Even the Minecraft Java launcher, and Minecraft Dungeons has a bug tracker!
https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/MCD/summary
https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/MCE/summary
https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/MCL/summary
https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/MCCE/summary
https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/MC/summary
https://bugs.mojang.com/projects/REALMS/summary
I and many others are so disappointed in EE's development. All we want is to actually have community involvement. Show us that our bug reports matter. Show us that the beta testing for new version actually does something.
The forums were built to involve the community, but obviously it is not enough. Please consider making a bug tracker.
-
Official comment
Hi Slayde Kerner! We are so thrilled you are interested in sharing your voice about building our community. We are actually building a survey and focus group for our current users. We'd love to invite you - is this something you'd be interested in? Part of this design is making it clear 1) the features you request 2) upvoting those and 3) the way that we report back when those features/bugs are completed.
-
Slayde Kerner thanks for bringing this up! While I am not an avid developer of new MEE features or fixer of old ones, I do agree that community feedback should be taken into account when new patch notes are released. Thank you.
2 -
Minecraft EDU Team Thank you so much for the reply and I'm glad to hear things are being worked on. As for becoming a part of the group you mentioned I would love to!
2 -
My initial in-class use of Minecraft goes way back to before the original #MinecraftEDU modded-Java version by @TeacherGaming, and I would echo Slayde Kerner in wishing for a more direct and Interactive discussion forum with the M:EE development team. Despite an aggressive build schedule to continually rev M:EE to keep it close to relative feature parity with Bedrock (and now Java), there doesn’t seem to be the same corresponding development focus in adding education-specific features.
I regularly see requests in the Community Forum from kids who are looking for the dolphins, or the pillagers, or the bees (whatever has arrived recently) — they are looking for the same features that they know exist on other platforms, And I would venture a guess that their wish for these things is not because they need them for educational work, but rather because MEE is their path to playing Minecraft. I would suggest that the requests for those items in M:EE may be inadvertently weighting feedback against the actual features that educators are asking for and need.
As an educator, it would be nice to see a process that would:
- regularly ask educators for input;
- allow feedback from the community to prioritize needs;
- provide updates on pending feature releases;
- maintain a database of outstanding bugs that can be tracked and monitored by the community.
I appreciate that not all educators are going to want to engage this fully with the development process, but I know that there is a keen community of Minecraft-using educators who would like to have a greater opportunity to advocate for; and support the development of, a game that they love using with students.
1 -
Andrew Forgrave I like that you emphasized the importance of adding education-specific features to M:EE and not simply keeping it up-to-date with Bedrock and Java. Personally, I would love to see a less convoluted solution for scenarios when students join a server from a different network.
1 -
Andrew Forgrave we hear you loud and clear and would love to run our new design by you, Slayde Kerner, @... and other community members as we prepare to launch a new beta community experience. We should have a survey and time and date options for a focus group by next week - stay tuned, we'll ping you and others in this space. Have a great weekend!
0 -
Thank you for this wonderful news. I know that there is much that Minecraft can accomplish for learners with continued engagement and involvement from the M:EE using community.
We look forward to hearing more about the refined community experience. I try to keep tabs on the Mentors Teams space, the Facebook group, a Discord channel, as well as the Zendesk community space. That’s a lot of different places to keep an eye out for news/collaboration about M:EE developments. I don’t know if there’s anyway to somehow pull them closer together, but there are lots of folks scattered across those different spaces who are keen for engagement.
Thanks again for this welcome news!
1 -
1
-
Hey Slayde Kerner and Andrew Forgrave sorry for the delay as the team is heads-down on beta goodness, but fear not, I should be able to ping this thread early next week with details - I look forward to you keeping me honest on that! Have an awesome weekend!
0 -
We are definitely looking forward to seeing what you have to share!
Thanks for keeping us updated!
1 -
This is wonderful. I have used MEE for some time now and am thrilled by the changes. I would concur with keeping up the versions but continuing to add education specific opportunities.
PS. I am using MEE for teaching global education in economics for my dissertation. Thanks for the inspiration.
0 -
This is really great news, thanks Slayde Kerner for starting the thread and thanks Wendy Gorton for helping move the ball forward. I agree with the addition of education-specific features and would add keeping the M:EE platform customizable in many ways so educators can continue to leverage the creative power of M:EE. We look forward to working on this together.
0 -
Slayde Kerner Joel Borellis Christian Pirlet Andrew Forgrave thank you so much for your patience- I'm thrilled to announce our special Release Party on Monday, August 10th at 9am!
If you can't make it live, we'll also share the recording. You'll have a chance to get a live demo of all the new features and ask our developers a few questions. This is the first of many community events we hope to create the feedback cycle between our community and developers strong to make the best experience we can for you!
Please consider registering for the event and also sign up on the form for our new Community Hub focus group and survey.
See you then we hope, and let us know if you have any questions!
-Wendy
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
13 comments