
Inspiring Young Writers with Minecraft - clbjnstn
https://www.edutopia.org/article/inspiring-young-writers-with-minecraft-matthew-farber
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yann63
From the article: an 8 year old kid, Stroud, wrote a book about Minecraft.

okay.

Question is now: is it because of Minecraft that this kid "became a writer",
or was it just the starting element? If the kid had been fond of frogs, rocks
or knitting, would he gave wrote a book just as well?

If you take any random kid playing Minecraft, could you turn it into a writer
like described in the article?

I think that the kid was a born writer, or is in the correct environment, but
crediting Minecraft for this is not correct.

~~~
vidarh
Maybe crediting Minecraft with it is "not correct", but I see with my own son
too that a lot his creativity centers around open-ended games - including
Minecraft - that helps provide structure when he wants to sit down and write.

It provides ample inspiration, and a setting that he can describe rather than
have to invent from scratch, and that is very helpful "scaffolding" to be able
to focus on the story in the beginning.

As he gets "caught up" in describing something, what he describes starts to
morph away from the game world he started with.

Look at the vast amount of heavily scripted Youtube videos that use open-ended
sandbox games as "set" and you see much of the same, where the games clearly
affect the creative process by letting people act and react and describe
rather than having to jump straight into inventing from scratch.

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chungy
This is a rather surprising development to me, I didn't imagine that this
would inspire writers, but I quite applaud what Minecraft does for creativity
at all ages!

~~~
dagw
My daughter loves telling Minecraft stories when we are going for walks or in
the car. They're long quite complicated stories about her, me, and her friends
having various made up adventures in the Minecraft world. More often than not
they'll spin off to include elements not possible in the game, but they always
start in the Minecraft world.

~~~
vblord
Wow, that's really awesome. If you don't mind me asking, how old is she? Do
you have any clue where she got her imagination/love for story telling?

~~~
dagw
She's 6 and at least the Minecraft storytelling aspect came from watching
people do so on Youtube. There are a bunch of people on Youtube (Stampycat
being her favorite) who use Minecraft do semi-scripted lets-plays/machinima
stories and for some reason she finds this to be the most fun and interesting
thing ever created.

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vblord
I'd love to see if the writers of these books made any money off of the books.
I understand that probably wasn't the goal of the article, but I'd like to
instill entrepreneurial values in my kids. Imagine if you were a kid that had
no income (except for birthdays/holidays). You could write a book about
something that you love and obsess over and get money for doing it. That would
be magical for them.

~~~
6stringmerc
IIRC the rules regarding income get fuzzy when basing one's written work on
the Intellectual Property of another entity. As in a "Minecraft story" revenue
would likely default to the owner of the IP, not the unaffiliated writer. If
the entity such as Minecraft reaches an agreement to give the writer of the
derivative content compensation, I think that's their choice (e.g. they never
hired the writer and are allowed control of their IP, which can include take-
downs). There's a lot of good publicity to be earned by including fan-works
into a global campaign, for sure! Also, money! See: "50 Shades of Grey" and
its relationship to "Twilight" being a way where both parties became fiscal
winners.

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mikegerwitz
Relying on Minecraft for education is similar to pushing the use of Word,
Excel, etc---encouraging the use of proprietary software that locks the user
into the _software_ rather than the general concepts that they introduce. Yes,
you do learn about those concepts, but why not teach them in an environment
that is friendly toward education, and then apply those concepts to the
proprietary software (like Office) should they need to be used in the future?

In this case, how about something like Minetest? Inspire them with a program
that they can share freely with their friends and family. With a program that
they can express their creativity as far as they desire, down to the source
code, even.

I think this was posted on HN a while back:
[http://www.ocsmag.com/2016/04/04/mining-for-
education/](http://www.ocsmag.com/2016/04/04/mining-for-education/)

[https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-
why.html](https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-why.html)

~~~
navait
Children want to play minecraft. All their friends play that, not Minetest.
Who will they play with on their minetest server? You?

It's like when I was a young kid, I wanted a game boy, but I got those shitty
tiger electronic games. My parents saw it as the same thing, but I couldn't
trade pokemon with my friends or talk about Zelda. Proprietary software either
way, but children don't care. Let children find their own way to FOSS, not
force them into using some half-baked clone.

~~~
mikegerwitz
> Let children find their own way to FOSS, not force them into using some
> half-baked clone.

A classroom setting is different than gameplay with peers.

I have a son. It's inevitable that he's going to want to play the games that
his peers are playing, and my ideals are not more important than his social
well-being.

But what a classroom uses and teaches is vastly different. It's _what_ is
being taught that matters. For example, some teachers may choose to use online
tools for teaching mathematics, whereas others will stick to textbooks and
hands-on play. Both are viable methods.

I've already met with the school district on student privacy issues, and I
plan to meet with them on other issues relating to software freedom, which
they were receptive to.

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tomc1985
I wish more people felt uncomfortable with such a close marriage between
commerce and lower education. Get em while they're kids and you have a
customer for life...

~~~
RandomInteger4
Is that really the case though? I mean, I'm no longer a customer of Mavis
Beacon, Mario Teaches Typing, and Dino Park Tycoon ...

~~~
tomc1985
It's more about breeding early comfort and familiarity with Microsoft
software. It's the same tactic Apple and MS use in schools

~~~
whatshisface
Minecraft bears absolutely no interface similarity to any other Microsoft
product. What you're saying happens and is already happening with the
educational discounts on MS Office, but Minecraft doesn't contribute to that
at all.

I can see that it might be creating familiarity with the company name (or is
it? what fraction of people distinguish between OEM, OS and software vendor?),
but unlike gas stations and hotels I don't see software as a place where that
matters a lot.

