Using Minecraft: Raspberry Pi Edition to get kids computing

After a workshop last week, Clive, our Director of Educational Development, sent me the following in an email: A parent came up to me, and said: "I'm concerned that on Minecraft you can blow things up with TNT, it's all about destruction, I'm worried about the effect on children…" If you ever want to make a six-foot-one Liverpudlian with a motorcycle cry, just repeat that sentence to him. Clive has been inconsolable for days. Why? Because Minecraft: Raspberry Pi Edition is a teaching and learning tool we’ve found absolutely invaluable. It’s a powerful way to get kids who didn’t realise they had an aptitude for programming excited about the Pi; it’s a creative, constructive tool; kids and teachers love it; and we find it’s enormously popular with kids all over the world. At an event this weekend, Carrie Anne Philbin and Alex Bradbury witnessed children crying (and I promise we are not the sort of people who try to make children cry) when asked to allow other kids to have a go. Here’s Martin O’Hanlon, of Stuff About Code, to explain why teaching with Minecraft is such a good idea. This video was filmed at last month’s Raspberry Jamboree: thanks to Alan O’Donohoe for filming it. We’re very close to launching our new website now: you’ll be able to see it, and the learning resources we’re producing, around the beginning of April. We’ll have plenty of Minecraft resources to show you then, packaged for teachers and for pupils. We hope you’ll enjoy using them as much as we have enjoyed making them.

URL: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/6518?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-minecraft-raspberry-pi-edition-to-get-kids-computing