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Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

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Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#41

Post by dmoo »

dmoo wrote: post #13
Confiks wrote: post #3

Looks like a great guide to get started with coding with Minecraft. There have been some efforts over the years, but this looks really complete. One obstacle for schools to get started with this however, is buying all the Minecraft licenses. To this end, I've been toying around a bit with an open source Minecraft clone called Minetest lately [1][2]. It's surprisingly complete, and could also have great uses in (progr…

Re Minetest this works with Python if you install the raspberryjammod from GitHub Also recently managed to get it running with @edu_blocks https://twitter.com/damianmooney/status/881158457671524353 So in general you can do anything with Minetest that you can with the raspberryPi version of minecraft.

Just for info here is the mod for Python and Minetest https://github.com/arpruss/raspberryjammod-minetest/tree/mas...

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#43

Post by GuiA »

danso wrote: post #21
Confiks wrote: post #3

Looks like a great guide to get started with coding with Minecraft. There have been some efforts over the years, but this looks really complete. One obstacle for schools to get started with this however, is buying all the Minecraft licenses. To this end, I've been toying around a bit with an open source Minecraft clone called Minetest lately [1][2]. It's surprisingly complete, and could also have great uses in (progr…

Sorry to go a bit off-topic, but how did school districts in the 80s justify buying licenses for Oregon Trail and other games of the era? The cost of OT must have been equivalent if not much more (inflation-adjusted) than even the consumer price for Minecraft. Admittedly, school funding has changed since then and it may be especially hard in today's assessment-focused ("teaching to the test", as some might say) parad…

They did not buy licenses.

That game (and others) was developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), an organization founded by Minnesota legislature. They developed educational software and distributed it on computers across the state of Minnesota.

Later, due to the huge success of the game, they sold the game (bundled with others) across the US.

tl;dr: made possible by government funding

https://medium.com/@stevepepple/why-did-all-children-of-a-ce... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#44

Post by Guyag »

nikkidurkin wrote: post #33

This looks great! I run after-school coding lessons for Australian kids aged 8-12, teaching them to code Minecraft mods using scratch-like code blocks (if you're interested, its https://codemakers.com.au ). I've been looking for a solution for teaching the more advanced students who want to start using a 'real' language. I was initially looking at using Scriptcraft, but TeachCraft looks like another great option!

Neat - I'm in the process of making a similar system which will spit out Spigot plugins, with the aim of letting kids create some simple ones themselves and hopefully planting the seed for getting them interested in programming. As part of this I included a 'split screen' view showing the generated Java in addition to the normal block work area, though this is read-only.

It's been more of a challenge than I thought it would be to design the blocks such that the end set isn't near enough a 1:1 mapping to Java - showing it to a non-technical friend of mine made it clear that my intuition was way off. Would be interested to hear how you approached this (if you don't mind).

Also interesting that I didn't find your website when I was initially researching, though I did come across https://www.learntomod.com/ (and even that was hard to find). I suspect my base search term of "minecraft blockly" isn't the most common one used by the target market to find something for their kids though.

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#45

Post by Diederich »

Macuyiko wrote: post #5

Nice! A while ago, I also worked on a Python Minecraft interaction which is not based on mcpi (and RaspberryJuice), but instead spawns a full Jython based Python interpreter session server-side allowing you to directly use the full Bukkit API [1]. This allows to use various commands mcpi doesn't support, such as creating lightning, explosions, and dynamically writing events using Python, either by using a client (sen…

Wow! I believe this is exactly what I've been looking for.

One of my goals is to get my son, who is really into Minecraft, also interested in programming.

The github project seems to be receiving updates too.

If I end up making some reasonable progress on this, I might just contact you later on, if that's ok with you!

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#46

Post by lowpro »

Rjevski wrote: post #2

This is really nice, however I wish someone makes an in-game version of this, so you don't even have to get a development environment running - just install the mod (which kids are already familiar with), jump in game and develop there.

I was thinking about this as well, maybe something like ComputerCraft which uses Lua but build on top of it, try and make it more visual though.

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#48

Post by laurentoget »

nikkidurkin wrote: post #37
laurentoget wrote: post #34

https://education.minecraft.net/faq/how-much-does-it-cost/ minecraft education is $5/year, with 'opportunities for volume licensing' which sounds affordable, but then it feels really misguided for microsoft not to give it away for free. Getting future developers to have some contact with the microsoft ecosystem is worth more than $5 i would think.

Unfortunately you need Minecraft for Mac/PC: Java Edition to use mods, so modding won't work on the education edition.

This is even worse than i thought then.

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#49

Post by pnutjam »

JPKab wrote: post #36
corobo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite possibly. I didn't think at all outside of my "jesus these schools are giving kids ipads now? When I were a lad the school had 2 PCs for the entire building" bubble. For reference I was also talking from within a UK only bubble too.

In fairness to you, I suspect the government schools (we call them public in the US, but I recall that "public school" means something entirely different in the UK) in your country are much better funded. I may be incorrect. In the US, public schools are funded primarily by local governments, and are therefore extremely unequal in their funding, even within a relatively small geographic area. I graduated high school…

I'm in a relatively well off US public school district. All kids have Ipads, but the parents must provide them or pay to rent them. If you qualify for the free lunch program they waive the rental fee.

Re: Show HN: Teachcraft – Learn Python through Minecraft

#50

Post by II2II »

danso wrote: post #21
Confiks wrote: post #3

Looks like a great guide to get started with coding with Minecraft. There have been some efforts over the years, but this looks really complete. One obstacle for schools to get started with this however, is buying all the Minecraft licenses. To this end, I've been toying around a bit with an open source Minecraft clone called Minetest lately [1][2]. It's surprisingly complete, and could also have great uses in (progr…

Sorry to go a bit off-topic, but how did school districts in the 80s justify buying licenses for Oregon Trail and other games of the era? The cost of OT must have been equivalent if not much more (inflation-adjusted) than even the consumer price for Minecraft. Admittedly, school funding has changed since then and it may be especially hard in today's assessment-focused ("teaching to the test", as some might say) parad…

One big reason: educational games have fallen out of favour within school systems. Many teachers were simply using them as incentives, rather than using them as guided educational tools. Without the guidance, these games had minimal value for learning. Of course, the value of the educational content also varied a lot. Even the good ones depended a lot on rote memorization, which cyclically goes into and out of favour among educators.

In this case, the other issue is that Minecraft is pure entertainment software. It may have educational value, but the origin of the game makes it a hard sell. (Civilization and SimCity faced similar problems.)

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