
Education in Minecraft - doppp
http://education.minecraft.net
======
asgard1024
That was a disappointment. I think education in Minecraft (-like game) is a
great idea, but what they presented lacks imagination what it could be. They
mention mathematics and history and problem solving, and I think for that, it
is exactly the wrong medium, and let me explain why.

I really like to play with mods, especially the tech ones, I enjoy building
automated processing systems and factories and bootstrap myself in the style
of "The Mysterious Island". Here's a game I really wish would exist (and I
think it will, eventually):

Realistic sandbox game based around technology and history of technology. De-
emphasize the kinematics, and emphasize other types of physics such as
statics, thermodynamics and electromagnetism, and also chemistry, material
engineering, biology and geology.

Imagine a game where you could learn about almost any industrial process
(including historical ones), ranging from agriculture through chemical
engineering to computer-controlled 3D printing.

I wouldn't mind complexity too much. There are people who enjoy flight
simulators which are quite complex. It should capture the spirit of common
industrial processes, within the first order of approximation.

I think this would be a great game to understand how the modern world is
built, on what basis, what it takes for economy to operate. So it would also
be very educational in the economics aspect (actually changing focus from
money to production would help people to understand economics a lot better).

Current Minecraft is not there though, even with mods. The basic physical laws
are not preserved, and often realism is eschewed. It's quite hard to make such
a game, because people who know the industrial processes well enough are rare,
but I really wish it would exist. And I think it would be highly educational,
but mostly in fields of natural sciences and technology.

~~~
frik
A huge problem are the game engines. Traditional state of the art game engines
have mainly static worlds for performance reasons (Unreal, ID Tech, RAGE,
Valve Source, etc).

Voxel game engines like Ken Silverman's Voxlap
([http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap05.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap05.htm)
), Infiniminer, Minecraft and Lego Worlds have a dynamic game world where
everything can be changed. It's resource intensive and choosing the optimial
world data structure is very important (avoid rendering invisible parts,
infinite worlds, LOD). And integrating realistic infinite physics is too
resource intensive. That's why you see little and only local physics.

From the graphical point of view the new Lego Worlds engine is really
fascination! It seems it uses advanced geometric shaders to render all the
tiny Lego parts on the fly. Does anyone know how it really works and which
data structure it uses?

~~~
asgard1024
Actually, I think the blocky world is good enough for the application I
described. Getting geometry and kinematics right is not so important for the
game. I think something like Minecraft with a rudimentary thermodynamics
system, statics/continuum mechanics for blocks, and mixture system for fluids
(including air) would be doable. I think what would be more important is to
change the crafting system from specific items to be more based on what
materials you use (kinda like Tinker's construct does it).

I even think the game doesn't have to be 3D - Terraria like world would be
good fit too, if done right (probably allow several different layers at each
tile - like background wall, plumbing and ambient layer for fluids).

~~~
frik
Local physics around the player is doable, like Minecraft's water/lava/red
stone. Some mods already add thermodynamics, magnetism, other fluids similar
to the water simulation.

Real infinite physics like draing a water dam and flooding mines is CPU
intensive (there are such mods too) and changes the gameplay (reversing a
flood means pumping out the water). In 2D it's a lot easier and several such
physics playgrounds exists (even with basic fluid physics). E.g. Phun
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phun) )
and some games based on 2D physics engines like Box2D.

~~~
leoc
Can't neglect to mention Dwarf Fortress and its 3D water physics. Of course
the price is that DF will happily drop to many seconds per frame during big
'physics moments'.

------
Pyrodogg
It'll be interesting to see how this new Microsoft/Mojang effort stacks up
with prior partnerships that Mojang already has.

See Teacher Gaming LLC and their Minecraft Edu project
[http://minecraftedu.com/](http://minecraftedu.com/)

They recently released a collaboration with the author of the ComputerCraft
mod, @DanTwoHundred. The offshoot is called ComputerCraftEdu. It adds a slick
visual programming interface to the lua-powered 'turtle' robots added by
ComputerCraft.

Trailer -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KwAr2gqgXg&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KwAr2gqgXg&feature=youtu.be)

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dmVI
Minecraft mods are a GREAT way to introduce kids to programming. Take a look
at the awesome work learntomod.com have done. We recently held a Junior
Hackathon, [http://jhack.co.nz](http://jhack.co.nz), based on Minecraft this
weekend (in Auckland New Zealand). It was a MASSIVE success and the kids had
an absolute blast!

~~~
bite_victim
Uhm, I just went and had a look at learntomod.com. Are all of the kids these
days software engineers? The "Blocks" language / tool looks waaay to
complicated, how on earth are kids learning that?! This video for example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFi2Xr5uQow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFi2Xr5uQow)
well that would be a perfect candidate for a college level class, I believe,
in teaching how to use visual programming software.

And even if kids somehow really grasp what is going on in there, aren't they
damaged in some profound way when they will actually have to deal with code? I
remember the shock and horror my colleagues had when in college we went from a
visual Java builder software to actual coding in the data structures course.

And also, learning JavaScript as a beginning language? With all of the
callbacks / asynchronous paradigm traps? Wow, that is really incredible for a
kid to understand!

~~~
acbart
I suggest reading up on the block-based literature, it's very interesting
stuff. I focus on introductory programming experiences for non-CS-major
undergraduates. Some of that research involves block-based languages. The
scaffolding is extremely helpful in getting them to write working code
quickly, and that's a valuable trade-off with "real" coding. Of course my goal
is to transfer them into real coding (we use Mutual-Language Transformation a
la Matsuzawa and embeddable code snippets a la Weintrop).

However, from what I've read of work with younger learners, you'd be amazed at
the level of complexity their code can reach. Just because you're young
doesn't mean you can't write big complex programs. Of course, when they're
older they'll look back on much of their work and say, "Oh it's so bad". But
that's just what learning means.

As for "damaging" learners - banish the thought. Short of actively lying and
gaslighting students, I've always found learners to be extremely robust. In
fact, technology and context have relatively little impact on young students
long-term compared to positive, excellent interactions with educators who know
what they're doing. It's more important for students to have successful
experiences that are fun and make them think, "Hey, this does stuff! Like,
real stuff!" There are many nuances to that statement (gender is particularly
fascinating), but I've found it's mostly true. Learning is all about
constructing experiences on top of experiences, and your introductory
experiences will always have degrees of artificiality and scaffolding.
Understanding evolves with time, effort, and feedback.

------
_jomo
Redstone is very useful to learn about and visualize electronics, for example
logic gates and how to create useful circuits with them, this can include
connecting simple "light switches" or a whole computer with CPU, RAM, etc.

Seeing _how_ they work actually helped myself a lot. When we were talking
about logic in class a year ago, we showed the teacher how you can do this in
Minecraft and he really liked the idea.

It really does take some time to learn enough about redstone to be able to
come up with your own designs - partly because redstone is _very_ weird when
you take a closer look - but I think it's worth it, at least for logic /
problem solving in general.

There already are a few servers that focus on Redstone only, lots of smart
(and young) people there.

~~~
Filligree
Redstone is neat, but try it with a mod such as RedLogic. It gives you the
basic logic gates——and, or, xor, timers, pulse formers, etc.——which makes it
all much simpler to get started.

It does mean you can skip much of the "physics of redstone", but I don't know
how valuable learning that is in the first place. The physics of Redlogic is a
fair bit simpler.

------
shiftpgdn
Interesting that an official version of
[http://minecrafthomeschool.com/](http://minecrafthomeschool.com/) is being
developed. I have a much much younger brother in Minecraft homeschool with
fairly positive results.

------
jacalata
I was recently at the Auckland Museum and they have an exhibit showing a
recreation of the Gallipoli Peninsula as it was for the ANZAC campaign that
had been built by local school students -
[https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/education/activities-and-
comp...](https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/education/activities-and-
competitions/gallipoli-in-minecraft-learning-kit)

------
garraeth
Video about Minecraft in education:
[https://youtu.be/qvPY3_bBfZM](https://youtu.be/qvPY3_bBfZM)

Starting about 13:30.

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sklogic
I think I gotta try adding a Minecraft backend to the QFlow toolchain. This
could be a lot of fun.

------
Zekio
I really wish Microsoft, will some day push Mojang to rewrite Minecraft in a
different language.

~~~
Pyrodogg
They are. At Minecon today they announced a beta for the Windows 10 version of
Minecraft. It's a port from the Pocket Edition version of the game.

More info: [http://news.xbox.com/2015/07/games-announcing-minecraft-
wind...](http://news.xbox.com/2015/07/games-announcing-minecraft-
windows-10-edition-beta)

~~~
hobarrera
I guess gp should have said

"I really wish Microsoft, will some day push Mojang to rewrite Minecraft in a
different language while keeping it portable."

From the article, it looks like the rewrite would not affect linux/*nix users.
If I get paranoid, I'd say they might even drop the "old" client at some
point.

------
shiggerino
Giving cigarettes to kids.

