Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Minecraft fans say game is gold mine for educational fun

Published September 10, 2013 in the Commercial Appeal

Want to know what all this Minecraft fuss is about? Nine-year-old Max O’Hearn explains the wildly popular video game this way: “You can do anything, literally anything, in the game, like punch a zombie with leather armor. They have cool stuff, like you get slapped in the face with a bunch of arrows and look like a hedgehog. It’s so epic.”

Max is all over Minecraft the computer game, the iPhone game, the YouTube videos, the parody songs, the Legos. He even plans Skype sessions with his buddies where they play on the same servers.

His mother, Chloe, likes the game because it is educational. “It’s basically a virtual representation of ways kids naturally play, but with an unlimited set of tools to play with. You can build things, destroy things, grow things, mine things, learn fundamentals of science, engineering, and architecture, create works of art, play house, play collaborative games with your friends and kill zombies.”

Minecraft was created by Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson and later developed and published by Mojang. It was publicly released for the PC in 2009 as a developmental alpha version and was published as a full-release version in 2011. It is now available for Android, iOS, Xbox, and Xbox Live. The game has won numerous awards and by last week had sold more than 12 million copies on PC, and more than 33 million copies across all platforms.

Bryan Berretta, the director of media and information services at Lausanne Collegiate School, says there are multiple modes, including a creative mode where players have an unlimited supply of resources, a survival mode where players have to watch for things like monsters, and an adventure mode that lets a player go on user-created quests.

“You make it what you will,” says Berretta. “The goal is to mine for resources and craft those resources into new

objects.” For example, a player can chop down a tree to get wood and then use that wood to build a “crafting table” in order to then build bigger objects.

Jeff White, the technology specialist at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal School, says, “You can truly build anything, and then live in it. It is like digital Legos without having to keep up with all the bricks — and there are a lot more different types of bricks.”

At the Viktor Rydberg school in Stockholm, Sweden, all 13-year-old students must take a mandatory course on Minecraft. Local schools aren’t there yet, but some educators are embracing the game in clubs and for special projects.

White has led Minecraft camps for the past two summers at Grace-St. Luke’s for fun, but says Minecraft can be used in the classroom as well.

“Mr. Boyd (a science teacher) requires science students to create a model of a DNS molecule, and students have used Minecraft to build it with all the detail and labels that are required,” he says.

“There are tons of skills that children can learn from Minecraft,” adds Berretta. “Crafting objects takes a bit of logic, not just in how the item is crafted, but in where to mine for the resources and what resources are needed for the recipe,” he says.

Also, players learn to build circuits and simple machines, create architectural designs for buildings, and barter for goods.

White says children also learn how to create “quick and dirty” servers that they oversee and maintain. They can administer privileges and different levels of game play for users that log in to their own Minecraft server. “Maintaining and keeping a server up and running takes patience and some trial and error to get it to work. Those are good life skills. Some folks will even learn a little about computer networking, filtering traffic, and determining port access,” he says.

Minecraft is so engaging, some people fear it is addictive. White says it does seem to have a magnetic draw.

“You build a world or a town or a farm, then you want to keep coming back to see how it has changed. Has the town been raided by other users? Have my crops grown any? It is a dynamic game with an ever-changing landscape, so you have to come back to see what has happened,” he says.

There’s also a powerful social element with the built-in chat feature.

“Maybe your child doesn’t have a smartphone, but if they have Minecraft, they can always catch up with their friends there,” says White.

It is difficult to block Minecraft — it is not technically “installed” on a computer, nor does it have to run online.

“Talk to your child about the responsibility that it takes to be self-disciplined enough not to overdo it,” White says. He recommends keeping laptops in family rooms and cutting off Wi-Fi late at night.

Many of the servers used for multiplayer gaming have no filter and no limit on what can be said and by whom. “Speak with your children about the dangers of online ‘friends’ and keep an eye on what servers your child is playing on,” says White.

Berretta encourages parents to play along.

“I set up a simple server that is only accessible at home. We’ve built our own little world where I leave surprises for them and tasks for them to build,” he says.

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