Minecraft is teaching a generation of children how to build architecturally-improbable houses with chickens embedded in the walls. Now it may be teaching children programming skills too.
US company ThoughtSTEM is preparing to release an add-on called LearnToMod in October, which will teach children how to make their own Minecraft “mods”, altering the game’s features.
The software is being tested with 150 students before its release, when it will cost $30 (£18).
“Kids are already spending ridiculous amounts of hours on Minecraft, so we thought this would be a good way to help them learn skills,” co-founder Stephen Foster told Wired in an interview.
LearnToMod has its roots in programming lessons developed by ThoughtSTEM for 8-15 year-olds. The tool uses Google’s Blockly programming interface, with children manipulating virtual blocks to create code, rather than diving straight into a language like JavaScript.
Anyone with the necessary skills can already create Minecraft mods and share them with the game’s community of tens of millions of players of all ages. Tools like LearnToMod will make it easier for children – one of the most fervent sections of that fanbase – to join in.
LearnToMod is just the latest example of Minecraft being used for educational purposes. In 2013, Google worked with MinecraftEDU and Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter to launch a mod called qCraft. Its aim was to inspire children’s interest in quantum computing.
“It lets players experiment with quantum behaviors inside Minecraft’s world, with new blocks that exhibit quantum entanglement, superposition, and observer dependency,” as Google explained at the time.
“Of course, qCraft isn’t a perfect scientific simulation, but it’s a fun way for players to experience a few parts of quantum mechanics outside of thought experiments or dense textbook examples.”
MinecraftEdu is a body created to help schools use Minecraft, including making customised versions of the game for use in the classroom, a library of worlds and activities, and training materials for teachers.
“This wasn’t planned to be a kids game from the beginning, and it’s still not planned to be a kids game! It’s a happy accident,” Minecraft developer Mojang’s business developer Daniel Kaplan told The Guardian in December 2013.
YouTube star Joseph Garratt – aka Stampy – is preparing to launch a new channel called Stampy School, which like his main channel will focus on gameplay footage from Minecraft, but this time with a serious education focus.
“Minecraft is an amazing platform. One, the fact that it is a open sandbox to do whatever you want in it, and two, everyone’s playing it, and if you’re not playing it, your kids are playing it,” Garratt told the MIPTV conference in April.
“If you take their engagement and put it into a more productive space like education or the arts, they’re going to be involved in that, they’re going to be engaged.”
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