Where is the research and what are the arguments that support Minecraft's educational utility? I haven't devoted a great deal of time to seeking them out, but so far I haven't found very convincing literature. Don't get me wrong, it seems like a great creative outlet, but why should a school prefer this over alternatives like music, art, or writing? I've seen a number of references to Minecraft's ability to simulate circuits and create logic gates, but how is this better than another logic board simulator or cheap electronics? For as many interesting lessons as Minecraft offers, the video game aspect of it necessitates a lot of "grinding" and virtual physical labor that doesn't seem particularly enriching. There is real intellectual meat buried within, but to this outsider it looks like "mostly entertainment" rather than "educational and entertaining".
Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
41–50 of 89 posts
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#42When Apple makes an iPad app to teach kids a programming language useful only in the Apple ecosystem, they're promoting STEM education. When Microsoft leverages a massively popular game to promote STEM education, they're weaponizing.
I don't remember the Apple context perfectly, but I think a key difference here is that Microsoft is selling it to educational institutions.
Alright, I had to look it up:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/apple-launches-coding-camp...
But yes, Apple was doing the bootcamps pro-bono. Yeah...I don't really mind the use of "weaponizing" in this context.
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of it has to do with: 1) Their increasing quantity of open source contributions 2) The rejection of the FSF's philosophy
Could you clarify who is rejecting FSF's philosophy? Apple? HN community? Microsoft?
There exist many people on HN (of course not a consensus) who disagree with the FSF's position that proprietary software is unjust.
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#44When Apple makes an iPad app to teach kids a programming language useful only in the Apple ecosystem, they're promoting STEM education. When Microsoft leverages a massively popular game to promote STEM education, they're weaponizing.
Exactly. Microsoft has always offered educational versions of Visual Studio at discounted/zero cost. I clearly remember getting a student copy of Visual Basic(VS6.0!) for ~$50. I built all sorts of stupid things with that and while it definitely biased me in favor of Microsoft tools you know what else it did? Helped me into a rich and diverse career in a wide array of technologies and stacks. Anything that helps brid…
$50 is expensive for personal software. Many IDEs are free for non commercial use
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#45When Apple makes an iPad app to teach kids a programming language useful only in the Apple ecosystem, they're promoting STEM education. When Microsoft leverages a massively popular game to promote STEM education, they're weaponizing.
Exactly. Microsoft has always offered educational versions of Visual Studio at discounted/zero cost. I clearly remember getting a student copy of Visual Basic(VS6.0!) for ~$50. I built all sorts of stupid things with that and while it definitely biased me in favor of Microsoft tools you know what else it did? Helped me into a rich and diverse career in a wide array of technologies and stacks. Anything that helps brid…
I had this too, it's what started me going with programming and I use visual studio till this day. It probably laid the foundations for my later job in information security.
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Microsoft has always offered educational versions of Visual Studio at discounted/zero cost. I clearly remember getting a student copy of Visual Basic(VS6.0!) for ~$50. I built all sorts of stupid things with that and while it definitely biased me in favor of Microsoft tools you know what else it did? Helped me into a rich and diverse career in a wide array of technologies and stacks. Anything that helps brid…
$50 is expensive for personal software. Many IDEs are free for non commercial use
Yeah but for $50 you can build something that someone might find useful and pay you for it. I wished I had more of an entrepreneur spirit in my college days, it would of paid for all those books that I barely used.
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#47Where is the research and what are the arguments that support Minecraft's educational utility? I haven't devoted a great deal of time to seeking them out, but so far I haven't found very convincing literature. Don't get me wrong, it seems like a great creative outlet, but why should a school prefer this over alternatives like music, art, or writing? I've seen a number of references to Minecraft's ability to simulate…
I entered "minecraft" in to google scholar, found a few you might find helpful.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=minecraft&btnG=&a...
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#48Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It used to be called DreamSpark, and it was awesome when I was in college - particularly since in those days, the Express, single-language free versions of VS hadn't come out quite yet, and the community edition was yet to be a twinkle in someone's eye. It looks like they give away many Azure services now as well ( https://catalog.imagine.microsoft.com/en-us )
I used the equivalent about 15 years ago and you could get windows, office, visual studio and a bunch of other stuff. Good deal.
Especially as you got 10 licences for everything. Was great value.
I believe they stopped it a year or two back.
Re: Microsoft is using Minecraft to vie for kids’ brain space and schools’ dollars
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Microsoft has always offered educational versions of Visual Studio at discounted/zero cost. I clearly remember getting a student copy of Visual Basic(VS6.0!) for ~$50. I built all sorts of stupid things with that and while it definitely biased me in favor of Microsoft tools you know what else it did? Helped me into a rich and diverse career in a wide array of technologies and stacks. Anything that helps brid…
$50 is expensive for personal software. Many IDEs are free for non commercial use
What world we live in that $50 is considered expensive....
I paid around 150 € in for Turbo Pascal 1.5 for Windows 3.1 with student discount and around 200 € for Turbo C++ 3.1 for Windows 3.1, back in 1993.
Imagine how much that would be in today's money!