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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.
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.
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.