Comment by fluxquanta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fluxquanta | Hacker News Reader

I'm very familiar with Minecraft -- I still have the PayPal receipt for when I sent 10 Euro to Mojang to get in on the beta back in 2010 (which seems like ages ago).

But, I ask innocently and without agenda, how is this used as a tool for educators? I know kids love it, and I understand why, but quotes like

>Since the introduction of Minecraft to the classroom, educators around the world have been using Minecraft to effectively teach students everything from STEM subjects to art and poetry.

make me wonder what exactly is the benefit of using Minecraft in the classroom from an educational perspective? Are lessons actually being planned around Minecraft, or is it like the video games I played in "computer lab" which were just a convenient way to get a group of 30 second graders to be quiet for 45 minutes? What's the benefit of using Minecraft over traditional teaching tools, other than shoehorning lessons into something kids are already familiar with?

I realize that this comment may sound like it's coming from a place of bitter skepticism, but I'm genuinely curious.

I teach programming at the middle school level and am planning a Minecraft event and some pilot classroom activities around it.

As I've researched what the whole Minecraft in the classroom thing is about, I've found a few ways it is being used, but they all boil down to making the learning experience more engaging to more students. Make it fun and the students will tear off and learn more better faster.

Some activities very directly support the curriculum, for example teachers who have made activities where concepts from quantum mechanics, newtonian physics, and life sciences have made working models in the Minecraft world where students can experiment and more directly experience the details behind these concepts.

Some are just virtual worlds where you can be a virtual tourist and learn about a place or time in history. There is one where you explore Boston during the time of the Boston Tea Party for example, and you have to talk to all of the NPC characters to learn facts you will be tested on later.

Some are very computer-science focused where students make their own mods or just use scripting languages to automate structure creation on a larger scale.

All of these could be taught using more traditional methods. For some learners, just telling them to read a book will be the highest throughput/most effective learning method. Those kids are going to do fine regardless. These new gamified virtual world methods of introducing the material may slow things down for the learners we historically see as highly capable learners, but they promise to engage and light a fire inside some of the other students who otherwise might get left behind.

How much you should or can tailor the experience for each audience is a challenge I face all the time. It isn't easy as every decision seems to involve improving the experience for one segment of the class, usually at the expense of another.

<These new gamified virtual world methods of introducing the material may slow things down for the learners we historically see as highly capable learners, but they promise to engage and light a fire inside some of the other students who otherwise might get left behind.>

Well said...there is a segment of the population which will likely never be exposed to STEM, or the methodology associated with critical thinking skills, any other way...I applaud your grasp of that concept...that's one of the primary differences between "teachers" and "educators"...

Many middle schools/high schools in my area teach computer science (programming mostly) with Minecraft. Its a good starting place for showing kids in a familiar environment what they can do with programming.

>Its a good starting place for showing kids in a familiar environment what they can do with programming.

Is it, though? Admittedly it's been a while but I feel like once you get beyond the absolute basics of circuitry Minecraft gets ridiculously complicated in terms of building the structures necessary to establish the circuitry (just search YouTube for the monstrosities that are necessary to build simple adders in Minecraft). At that point you're not really learning anything except how to play Minecraft.

When a student's at middle or high school level I feel like LEGO Mindstorms or even Arduinos would be a better option.

Looking at it from a very high level, building these layered structures in Minecraft might serve as a light introduction to the problems that come up in PCB layout, perhaps. You can't cross copper traces on a real-life circuit board either.

There is a command block [0], which seems to provide a crude scripting environment. It perhaps might signalize what programming can do, but I think it's hardly an effective learning environment.

[0] http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Command_Block

That's definitely something new since I last looked at the game.

It would depend on what this initiative does. I'm hoping this looks more like an official path to modding-like tools that may not offer the whole complexity of the world, but would allow things like programmatic world generation and possibly interactive entity AI, etc. I would tend to agree that redstone, for all its possibilities, is not really a very good educational mechanic beyond the basics on its own. In Brooks' terminology, redstone has way too much accidental complexity for what little essential complexity it could expose... it's the opposite of what I'd want in my education. What little time I've spent fiddling with it has involved way too much very, very, very low-level physical routing (and a lot of time wishing I could stick redstone on the side of a block).

Well, I disagree. I loved Rocky's Boots back in 1st grade on ye olde ][e, which is sort of similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky%27s_Boots

What do you disagree with? I'm not saying computer games have no place in education, or that educational games shouldn't be fun to play. I just don't understand why Minecraft, a game that's basically just a better LEGO simulator than LEGO could ever come up with, is being re-purposed for education.

It's much like the arguments that often come up here on HN where the flavor-of-the-week framework or language is being inefficiently twisted to fit a purpose it wasn't designed for.

Because people learn best when they're engaged with the problem to solve and have intrinsic motivation. For example, a programming bootcamp where people have a goal of getting a job, or producing a certain app.

Similarly, children are already playing with Minecraft and are interested in doing "cool stuff" with it. If you can tap into that existing goal and use it as a way for them to learn something else, it's less of an uphill struggle since they'll be intrinsically motivated to learn.

Your comment is spot on for vanilla Minecraft, however this is MinecraftEdu which includes ComputerCraftEdu which has both a tile-based and text-based programming environment (based on Lua). It seems fairly well designed[1].

[1] http://services.minecraftedu.com/wiki/Teaching_with_Computer...

Okay, this makes much more sense. I still have my doubts, but thanks for the link.

They're not actually building things out of red stone (although they may if they're learning some basics about circuitry). The schools around here are using Minecraft to teach Java-by doing things like creating custom blocks in Minecraft that when activated call Java code you've written that turn all the blocks in an X radius into wool, or samples an image you feed it and recreates the pictures in Minecraft using colored blocks of wool as pixels.

I think a number of people use minecraft forge and Java to create mods, albeit very simple ones. That can be very valuable as an introduction to programming.

The tragedy of this announcement is all the "good stuff" in minecraft is in the mods.

For your specific redstone logic problems, try the "project red" mod. Its in plenty of FTB packs.

http://ftbwiki.org/Project_Red

You could make some points about chemistry using minechem. Maybe not much deep knowledge but something basic might seep in.

Across many mods there tends to be an inherent bias toward industrialization / capitalist investment. Produce things slowly by hand or quickly with an assembly line and even faster with speed upgrades.

I suppose there are kids who are extremely fuzzy on the basic concepts of steam based electrical power generation and railcraft and big reactors would clarify some of that.

There are probably ecological lessons in terrafirmacraft and the numerous food mods. Not all of minecraft is "apples come from oak trees" or whatever.

I suspect it works very well for shallow gaining interest, very well for signalling, not so well for serious learning. Kinda like ipads in schools. Or computers in school, in general.

>At that point you're not really learning anything except how to play Minecraft.<

True...many students do stop there...but others may be inclined to follow up based on interest, or curiosity...children's minds veer off in unpredictable ways, just as adult's minds do...exposure to new concepts is ultimately what education is all about...

I think your question is valid...I'd love to see what would happen if a class of 8th graders were given a Raspberry Pi at the beginning of a semester and asked,"What can we do with this? Then give them the whole semester to answer...

Educating with Minecraft is using mods; otherwise it's just like you said; not learning about anything but how to play Minecraft. The fact that they're not supporting mods for this shows how completely out of touch they are.

I think a lot of kids love Minecraft and it's more a brand than just a game. So in that sense it is an engaging topic.

Minecraft could obviously be used for creative and social play, like playing with LEGO. (I wouldn't say it's better or worse than that but it is a bit different.) However, Minecraft is also programmable so could be used in similar ways to basic electronics.

>Minecraft is also programmable so could be used in similar ways to basic electronics.

That's the one part I can definitely see as being educational with the redstone wiring and logic gates and whatnot. Having said that, however, I feel like learning actual circuitry (y'know, with real wires) is a better exercise because it's tangible.

Maybe I'm just jaded and dislike the idea of using computers for everything in education. I guess Minecraft probably helps the kids stay engaged more than physical circuitry would.

An aspect to consider is that minecraft is a very social game. A game that draws the young, and spreads social development informally through interactions between kids. It's an afterschool chatroom of its day. It's a medium that doesn't have to directly supply lessons, just conduct them.

Is it Microsoft's vision to make Minecraft what SecondLife was promised to be -- a social, virtual learning environment based in a computer game?

That really sounds like trying to shove a sphere in a cube shaped hole.

My opinion is that Microsoft is just acquiring an existing community set and tools that come with it. They're positioning themselves to be pertinent.

When I was pretty young I was a complete and total klutz. Working in actual wires would have quickly degenerated into pathetic flailing for me, but working in a digital world would have been much easier.

My kids are very young, but they love the board game "robot turtles"(http://www.robotturtles.com/) . I have found that there is a "minecraft hour of code" that I am anxious for them to try. (almost like a modern LOGO) http://geekdad.com/2015/12/minecraft-hour-of-code/

STEM education is huge just now, especially in terms of those looking for or providing funding...the wheat and chaff may be separated at a later date, when outcomes are measured...

I think there's some good dialog here, but I wanted to offer my own experience as a volunteer (I've been wanting to get around to writing a blog post about this topic actually!).

First of all, kids love Minecraft. And I mean LOVE it. Its ubiquitous amongst them. I tried to come up with an analogy to my own youth, but I can't. Its not a flash-in-the-pan fad like pogs were and its not Pokemon or Magic. I have met a handful of kids who did not have experience with Minecraft, but they almost always know what the game is at least.

I helped put together a few little Minecraft camps and workshops armed only with my own personal knowledge of the game (I too was an early adopter of the game) and a handful of mods. The first couple of camps I tried were pretty poor execution on my part. The kids usually found ways to mass-spawn monsters or create The End portals and generally stayed unfocused. They were way more interested in dinking around the game than doing anything productive.

But then we put more structure around it and locked some of the features down with mods. They kids were tasked with creating a city, so I plotted out a flat grid of land and gave each of them access to a city block (sometimes 2 or 3 of them would get to share a block). It took a few sessions, but they made a pretty cool looking city. And for the most part locking down the areas kept them on task.

Recently I helped out with a camp that let the kids choose between building structures, creating mini-games, or programming. The programming part was mostly using the ComputerCraft mod[1], which was pretty much like turtle. You could program a robot block to mine or build for you. The potential here is pretty huge for kids to get into programming from a very early age who normally wouldn't since its very accessible (think Scratch, but in a game they already love).

What I keep reminding myself though is that Minecraft is yet another great, accessible, family-friendly game that can help introduce kids to computers very early. There will be a certain percentage who take it to the next level and learn how to create simple java mods for the game. There is potential for some to craft huge sculptures and cities and generally expand their artistic skills. I think there is a very real connection between many people who love programming today who also loved playing games in school like Oregon Trail and SimCity, that's the potential for Minecraft imo. So even when they aren't totally being focused and are just playing around in the world, its giving them a friendly impression of what computers can ultimately do.

[1]: http://www.computercraft.info/

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