MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I spotted this recently and Nem Jnr seems to be really enjoying it - of course being minecraft-based inherently makes it attractive to him.
http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-and-code-org-want-to-teach-kids-to-code-with-minecraft/
Microsoft and Code.org want to teach kids to code with Minecraft
The popular block-building-sandbox game is creeping into the third annual Hour of Code, a worldwide campaign to spark students' interest in programming.
Direct link: https://code.org/mc
looks like the scratch platform.
https://scratch.mit.edu/
Stoner Jr has had some fun with scratch. He's going to go absolutely batshit about this though 🙂
Cheers nemesis.
(and it runs on Chromebox 😉 )
Yeah saw this on Facebook.
Nice. Looks like a mashup up of Scratch and [url= https://lightbot.com/ ]LightBot[/url].
If you want to get him a bit further into programming, but still using Minecraft, then you can always "hack" it with some Python on the Raspberry Pi:
Nem Jnr is minded to do programming but can't quite get over the first hurdle of trying some programming rather than playing minecraft - I think that this might be the way to get him over that first hurdle. He's desperate to play it after school today which is pretty positive.
middle_oab goes to Coder Dojo every few weeks up here - he loves it, and this is the kind of stuff they do.
I at work and trying to find time to put together a geocache in school grounds meets minecraft module for schools...middle_oab may end up being the main author.... 😆
Is this like getting a Spectrum to print 'poo' over and over in different colours and make random 80s computer beeps?
10 PRINT INK RND*7;"POO";
20 BEEP 0.01,RND*50
30 GO TO 10
RUN...
No?
Pretty much 🙂
I could never decide what was more fun, doing that ^ or accidentally on purpose pressing the BREAK key when your friend had almost finished his work (as I recall on the BBC computer this basically ****ed up all their work)
Griefer!
🙂
Bump for the evening crowd. Nem jnr is loving it
In two minds about this. bensalesMK2 loves minecraft, and I've been a professional programmer. I don't see the need for all kids to be able to program. It's a bit like saying all kids should be a car mechanic. An enquisative and exploratory mindset should be encouraged, but the path should be driven by the child's interests, not what's in fashion. In the case of bensalesMK2 he'll more likely be a chemist or a ballet dancer. And bensalesMK3 will go for gymnastics or art. Both will be exposed to everything.
I don't think anyone is suggesting it should be forced on anyone
But learning to program, even in a gentle way like this, is good for both problem solving and logical reasoning. You might not program a computer for a lifetime after finishing little courses like this, but the ability to follow steps to solve problems is invaluable.
I don't think anyone is suggesting it should be forced on anyone
*hides cattle prod behind back*
bensales - chemist as in Boots? That's ok.
Chemist as in scientist - :shakes head:
I learned about this a few months back from a professor friend who was using a rasberry pi hack..
I need to get amongst it having a six year old with a computer obsession
I don't think anyone is suggesting it should be forced on anyone
Well [url= http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/04/coding-school-computing-children-programming ]it's part of the National Curriculum for kids from 5 upwards[/url], so they sort of are a bit.
I don't see the need for all kids to be able to program. It's a bit like saying all kids should be a car mechanic.
You could say that for almost any subject in school though.
Why teach chemistry, biology, history when no one thinks that every kid should be a chemist, biologist or historian?
I don't think the aim here is for every kid to come out of school ready to write their own operating system, just as we don't expect a few lessons dissecting frogs to turn every kid into a microbiologist.
But the reality of the modern world is pretty much every kid will use some form of computer a multitude of times every day, so having some idea of how they work is a powerful thing.
Plus it teaches lots of things that are generally useful and/or cross into other fields (logic, decision making, planning, problem solving, set theory, algebra etc).
bensalesMK3 will go for gymnastics or art.
That's a good example - lots of modern artists are using computers to make art. [url= https://processing.org/ ]Processing[/url] is a programming language specifically developed for the visual arts.
Plus it teaches lots of things that are generally useful and/or cross into other fields (logic, decision making, planning, problem solving, set theory, algebra etc).
That's called mathematics.
Programming is application of mathematics and physics. Learn those then you can do anything.
I think my lass has done a lot of this via roblox.