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How Minecraft Is Helping Kids Fall In Love With Books (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Robert Louis Stevenson's 1881 classic Treasure Island tells of Jim Hawkins's adventures on board the Hispaniola, as he and his crew -- along with double-crossing pirate Long John Silver -- set out to find Captain Flint's missing treasure on Skeleton Island. Now, more than a century later, children can try and find it themselves, with the bays and mountains of Stevenson's fictional island given a blocky remodeling in Minecraft, as part of a new project aimed at bringing reluctant readers to literary classics. From Spyglass Hill to Ben Gunn's cave, children can explore every nook and cranny of Skeleton Island as part of Litcraft, a new partnership between Lancaster University and Microsoft, which bought the game for $2.5 billion in 2015 and which is now played by 74 million people each month. The Litcraft platform uses Minecraft to create accurate scale models of fictional islands: Treasure Island is the first, with Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom just completed and many others planned. [...] The project, which is featured on Microsoft's Minecraft.edu website, is currently being presented to school teachers and librarians across the UK. There has been "an enthusiastic response" to the trials under way in local schools, with plans to roll Litcraft out to libraries in Lancashire and Leeds from October 2018.
How the fsck did they get a minecraft.edu domain reg accepted?
Any plans to model some after R'lyeh or the dungeons beneath Toledo?
Add Bibliocraft and you can put the book itself into the game.
I can't wait for a Lord of the Flies version
Oooooo, a Ringworld one!!
Dylan, like many nine-year-olds, enjoys books but is more enthusiastic when talking about Minecraft, which he does with the casual expertise that many children have with their favourite games.
Speaking from experience, one can easily get caught up with the game instead of the books.
She says, of the Litcraft Treasure Island: “We hope it will motivate reluctant readers – we can say, ‘We’re going to read the book and then at one point, we’ll go play on the ship.’
I'm thinking that maybe put things - shortcuts - in the game that only someone who read the book could get.
I hope those kids don't learn the common vice of the "OMG books" crowd and start congratulating themselves for their entertainment preferences. Books are no better or worse than other entertainment choices.
Reading is good and educational, but being social is good too and other entertainments are better for that. You're not better than other people because you read for entertainment.
Also, good newer books are not worse than "classics". Classics are mostly only classics because they were good when there was less competition. (There are exceptions to this, of course.)
They do this in all of the in educational games and it's a silly exercise. The kids are playing Minecraft with a hint of Treasure Island. I doubt wholeheartedly they'll pick up the book.
They could set it up so you have to read the book in order to find the actual treasure, but it's still a gimmicky tie in.
It's a shame that the best edutainment game out there was the Oregon Trail series. Make more games like this!
I loved reading these books as a kid because I was fortunate enough to have parents and educators who fostered that in me. I'm continuing to do the same with my children.
Here's a hint: Maybe stop giving electronics to kids and encourage entertainment elsewhere. You'd be surprised what they find enjoyable. And this coming from a crusty old 30 year old!
Unrelated and slightly off topic rant: if you think kids need smartphones or laptops with some violent AAA EA title shooter because you're worried about them fitting in, getting lost, or some other convoluted excuse you're a bad parent. Stop letting electronics parent your kids because you're too lazy to encourage proper habits.
As a parent with two kids already with two working full time adults, and a mortage parenting young children isn't difficult.
I do see a lot of weak parents out there.
Great. "What I liked most is that I didn't have to use my imagination!"
The dumbing-down continues apace.
My .sigmonster knew about this one before I did: News flash: Lowest Common Denominator down 50 points
If that isn't enough already just give up.
As a parent with two kids already with two working full time adults, and a mortage parenting young children isn't difficult.
I grew up in that environment.
In school during gym, we were playing softball and I didn't know which way to run bases because my Dad never did that with me. I was bullied over that.
I have very little coordination because my Dad or Mom didn't play catch or anything with me. (I was picked on for that). I have no "ball sense". They were working. To put food on the table? No. To buy luxury shit. Cars, fur coats, jewelry - shit to out-do the Jones next door.
When I was struggling in school, they didn't help. They yelled at me to "WORK HARDER!!" No direction ... like work harder how? (Now that I have taken the "how to learn" class on Coursera, I know what to do - at 55 years-old.
As far as connection to my parents....well, they're kind of strangers. One is dying and frankly, I was more concerned with one of my cats when it was sick and dying.
I have no memories of playing ball with my Dad or Mom. No happy memories of doing things together. I stay in touch out of duty.
Dad was always at work to make money to buy shit. I don't even have a legacy - like a million dollar inheritance to think, "OK Mom and Dad, you did this for me."
The GREATEST thing you can do for you child(ren) is to spend time with them. THAT means more than ANY crap you can BUY.
"Treasure Island.mcworld". I can't get it installed on PC, using the basic methods.
Searching for a PC version, one was taken down in 2015 http://www.minecraftmaps.com/s...
Books are papery blogs that we had in the stone age, when phones didn't have porn yet,
Crusty? I'm way older than you and I can see how supervised electronics can be useful. Supervised as in one or more parents being involved.
Speaking of which:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/assassins-creed-origins-historian-1.4382255
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/20/17033024/assassins-creed-origins-discovery-tour-educational-mode-release
The beautiful screenshots you see of epic Minecraft builds are usually taken using a special shader addon that is not part of "stock" minecraft. Would be nice if Microsoft would provide such an experience out of the box. Shaders really do make the game look epic!
As evidenced:
Litcraft, a new partnership between Lancaster University and Microsoft, which bought the game for $2.5 billion in 2015 and which is now played by 74 million people each month
Not like Minecraft wasn't insanely successful before MIcrosoft bought it to start fucking it up or anything.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Computer time is computer time and far more cherished among the preteens than any book reading. My preteen boys read a lot but that's because they get cut off a lot and we canceled cable TV. Like the multiple generations above them right now they will stare at screens info grazing or play currently Fortnite unless redirected. Minecraft is Minecraft. No one's reading anything because of it except those small Minecraft books of mostly pictures.
I simply reward kids when they read. We use kind of currency the kids can earn by reading certain amount which increases as they come better and older. This helps getting past the hardest part of learning something new but obviously it might do some psychological harm related to self rewarding. But being bad at reading does many kinds of harm so I am willing to risk it.
There's always a bit of a panic that kids aren't reading. "Oh no! Kids are watching TV rather than reading!" "Argh! They're playing video games rather than reading!!", "The internet will destroy books!!!"
People are still reading. Kids still enjoy books. Books are no less enjoyable now than they were years ago. There's no need for gimmicks.
To say Microsoft overpaid is an understatement.
Tanks for your info about entertainment.