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Microsoft Weaponizes Minecraft In the War Over Classrooms (backchannel.com)
Minecraft: Education Edition offers lesson plans like "City Planning for Population Growth" and "Effects of Deforestation," and a June preview attracted more than 25,000 students and teachers from 40 different countries. Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes: In the two years since Microsoft acquired Minecraft's parent company, it's discovered a brilliant new direction to take the game: it's turning it into a tool for education, creating both an innovative approach to classroom technology and an inspired strategy for competing with Google and Apple in the ed-tech market. 'I actually never believed there would be a game that would really cross over between the commercial entertainment market and education in a mainstream way,' says cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito—but Minecraft has managed to do just that.
In 2015 Chromebooks represented over 50% of PC sales for U.S. schools, while Windows PC accounted for just 22%, the article reports. But Minecraft is the second best-selling game of all time, behind only Tetris, and in the two years since Microsoft acquired it, "Sales have doubled to almost 107 million copies sold... If you were to count each copy sold as representing one person, the resulting population would be the world's 12th largest country (after Japan)." And as the article points out, "wherever Minecraft goes, Microsoft is there."
In 2015 Chromebooks represented over 50% of PC sales for U.S. schools, while Windows PC accounted for just 22%, the article reports. But Minecraft is the second best-selling game of all time, behind only Tetris, and in the two years since Microsoft acquired it, "Sales have doubled to almost 107 million copies sold... If you were to count each copy sold as representing one person, the resulting population would be the world's 12th largest country (after Japan)." And as the article points out, "wherever Minecraft goes, Microsoft is there."
So education is 'weaponizing' now ? ./ editors : stop making overly sensationalist headlines. Please.
Note to
How the fuck does Minecraft constitute ed-tech?
To be fair, if anyone can take all the fun out of Minecraft, Microsoft can.
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They haven't "discovered" anything. Mojang has had a long history of social activism and using Minecraft for educational purposes, long before Markus sold everyone at the company up the river to Microsoft. Vu, Lydia and Owen did more to do good with the brand than Microsoft can ever hope to do by simply using the brand as a screwdriver in their toolbox to drive mindshare to their own products.
I knew MS was going to ruin Minecraft eventually.
Education _IS_ entertainment. The most brilliant minds in history were not surrounded by circus clowns and gladiators to learn, they took pleasure in learning because the end result is finding more knowledge and teaching others. The Academy in Athens was not full of hookers and cocaine, yet it produced the overwhelming majority of Political Philosophy we see today, the majority of the Mathematics we use and see today, and extended a language which became the root of most languages spoken today. Socrates died middle class yet taught, and still teaches those willing to *gasp* read a book today. Aristotle s Trig and early Calculus, Euclid's Geometry, and Pythagoras's Math are still taught today. They did it without bright flashy lights and everyone being required to path them on the back and get trophies for "trying".
We have immense problems with Government mandated "common core" and that's after more than a half a century of curriculum cutting and reorganization to turn "Education" into "Indoctrination". And you want "entertainment"? Are you speaking from a position of ignorance or insanity?
Either way, you and people making these types of statements and demands make me understand why the USA has gone from one of the top places in the World for education to the 29th for math and science. This is not a problem of kids being dumb, it's a problem of parents being dumb and believing propaganda over facts.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.