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Education Microsoft Programming

Microsoft Is Very Determined That Kids Will Learn To Code Using Minecraft 56

Posted by BeauHD from the seven-years-and-counting dept.
theodp writes: On Tuesday, Code.org announced that the new activities for kids in this year's Hour Of Code will include yet another Minecraft-themed tutorial from Code.org Diamond Supporter Microsoft, making it seven years in a row that the best-selling videogame of all time has 'headlined' the Hour of Code during the holiday buying season. Going into the Hour of Code in 2018, Microsoft boasted that 100+ million Minecraft Hour of Code tutorials had already been logged by students.

In this year's Hour of Code: TimeCraft tutorial, kids will "learn basic coding concepts to correct mysterious mishaps throughout history!" An accompanying one-size-fits-all lesson plan for ages 6-18 instructs students to: "Experience a choose-your-own-adventure game, exploring key moments in human achievement. Using your coding superpowers, save the future by solving mysterious mishaps in time." Among other things, the coding challenges have K-12 students travel back in time to save Jazz from a kazoo future, prevent the Great Pyramids from being built as cubes, save the Great Wall of China from destruction by pandas, and wipe the frown off of the Mona Lisa. New this year, Microsoft notes, is that educators can sign up to have a Microsoft Education Expert lead their classroom through an Hour of Code lesson with Minecraft, thanks to the magic of Microsoft Teams Live Events.
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Microsoft Is Very Determined That Kids Will Learn To Code Using Minecraft More

Microsoft Is Very Determined That Kids Will Learn To Code Using Minecraft

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  • Gatekeepers (Score:3)

    by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @06:47AM (#61977715)

    I have a 9yo in my orbit who would dearly like to program his minecraft game , the problem is the version with python and all the ammenities that kids would use to do this seems to require being enrolled in a particular school program, and his school just isnt in that program. (And the Java option is way about his competence, we're talking about a little kid here)

    Microsoft, just put it out there, and the kids will flock to it. Don't put gatekeepers in the way that a significant portion of working class kids cant pass.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      I bought my son a book called "Learn to Program with Minecraft" by Craig Richardson. The first chapter is difficult, getting a version of Minecraft running that has hooks in it for Python. I'm a programmer and I know Minecraft pretty well, and it was a challenge for me just because books like this end up being out of date almost immediately. You need to do a lot of googling. After we got it running, the following chapters were pretty simple. But honestly, it didn't hold his attention. But that's him,
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I would formulate this differently: "Microsoft is very determined to sell Minecraft Education licenses to schools all over the world."

  • Why fix what's not broken? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @07:26AM (#61977751)

    Microsoft already makes excellent educational software to learn programming and software engineering: it's called Microsoft products.

    I learned assembly by abusing MSDOS internals every which way.

    I learned optimization by trying to speed up GWBASIC

    I learned APIs (and how not to obfuscate them) by coding a TSR to trick Windows 95 into running on top of DRDOS.

    I learned about the importance of input checking by sending OOB packets to Win95's TCP/IP stack and crashing people's machines on IRC.

    I learned to code viruses on all versions on all Microsoft OSes of yore - and everything that goes with them, like filesystems, steganography, self-modifying code to evade antivirus software...

    I learned never to trust a third party to automatically any of my machines unattended - especially production machines - thanks to one fuck-up Tuesday too many.

    Etc etc.

    Imagine if I had learned programming and IT on good software: I'd never have learned anything. Thank you Microsoft! - and I'm not even joking :)

  • Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @07:36AM (#61977759) Homepage

    Every month its "We'll get kids coding using [insert gamified coding enviroment here]".

    Newflash - kids who are interested in coding will naturally take it up anyway, the ones who arn't, won't. Forcing them to do it will achieve nothing and may put them off even more.

    Also despite what a lot of people in IT seem to think , learning to code is not a particularly valuable skill in the real world UNLESS you go into IT. Learning basic maths is far more useful.

    • Coding basics should be a requirement in elementary school. Worst case the kids learn a bit about logic and cause/ effect (if/then)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "Coding basics should be a requirement in elementary school"

        Why?

        "Worst case the kids learn a bit about logic and cause/ effect (if/then)"

        They learn that through normal life. Learning maths, english (or whatever their native language is) and other skills are far more important at that age. Let them taking CS as a module when they're teenagers if they want.

        • Why?

          Same reason English, maths, science, history, geography, foreign languages, shop, etc are taught.

          Learning maths, english (or whatever their native language is) and other skills are far more important at that age.

          Why?

          • Learning maths, english (or whatever their native language is) and other skills are far more important at that age.

            Why?

            Can't collaborate with others in MC without language. Going to need math for everything in life including MC.

            I'm not against teaching programming, and it's a false dichotomy to suggest that they can't also learn it in addition to math and english, but it's clear what's more important.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            English and basic maths are essential for everyday life and a knowledge of the world is required to successfully operate in it, hence geography. Programming is essential for nothing unless you're a programmer. Even websites can be designed using point and click now so even learning HTML and javascript is pointless for that.

            Unfortunately you're like a lot of people in IT who seem to think its the hub the world revolves around. It isn't. The world is a distributed topology, not wheel and spoke.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          Worst case the kids learn a bit about logic and cause/ effect (if/then)

          They learn that through normal life.

          IMO the really useful lesson that they could all learn, regardless of whether programming is for them or not, is that computers don't read your mind. If everyone understood that, they would be able to communicate far more effectively with the small percentage of people who continue with programming because they enjoy and/or are good at it.

      • You got it backwards: logic should be required in school.

        Coding? Why? Which kid, as in *kid* will ever have a device that is not his parents computer where any code it does is in any way relevant?
        Let it read a cook book and help cooking. (That is what a CPU is doing).
        Challenge it to write a summary about what it did during cooking. That is a cooking recipe. That is coding.

        Coding as in "coding for a computer" as in "learning how to use a programming language" as in "doing something - that simply sucks", has

    • Also despite what a lot of people in IT seem to think , learning to code is not a particularly valuable skill in the real world UNLESS you go into IT.

      Ah... right:

      Experimenting with Arduino's, Lego Mindstorm etc. is not fun.
      Hacking a LED driver board for a flashlight is not something you'd ever want to do.
      NOBODY does the oldskool "develop a fun game in your bedroom" anymore.
      Drones, electronic toys, home automation systems etc, etc. ONLY come as closed-source appliances that are used as-is & discarded afterwards.
      Bugs in all software in existence are only fixed by IT experts, never by that software's users, hobbyists or interested m

      • Coding usually requires some basic math skills. Comes with the territory. Therefore learning to code = at least learning some math. Never a bad thing imho, given how many people seem to lack basic math skills. ;-)

        Indeed. I started learning about basic 3D geometry precisely because I was trying to code 3D graphics in QBasic. I didn't even realise I was "learning maths", I was just finding out things I needed to make my game work. My game never worked, but I did end up with a starfield screensaver that had c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Which part of "kids who are interested in coding will naturally take it up anyway" confused you? Perhaps you should have spent a bit more time on your english comprehension skills at school.

    • Every month its "We'll get kids coding using [insert gamified coding enviroment here]".

      Newflash - kids who are interested in coding will naturally take it up anyway, the ones who arn't, won't. Forcing them to do it will achieve nothing and may put them off even more.

      Also despite what a lot of people in IT seem to think , learning to code is not a particularly valuable skill in the real world UNLESS you go into IT. Learning basic maths is far more useful.

      The same can be said about any subject. I haven't seen a kid yet that is not inclined to learn the basic blocks of coding. There are a lot of games that are actual, physical board games that teach the basic blocks (Coder Bunnyz, Coder Marz, robotic kits) and kids love them. My kid on her own signed up in Middle School for a class using MIT App Inventor, etc.

      The entire experience of Minecraft and Roblox involves world building, and customization, a lot of which is, in fact, configuration-driven programming

      • Kids learn by playing. Make coding fun and they come. It doesn't mean we make them software engineers, but the basics of programming are here to stay as fundamental business skills (it's been like that for almost two decades since programmable spreadsheets became the norm in businesses.)

        We in IT truly fail to realize how important programming has become outside the realm of IT and "serious" software development.

        I don't have a thing against exposing kids to coding. I remember when I was learning way back in the dark ages. Couldn't stop me. Staying up way too late with a C64 and writing Basic. Even did some machine language, which was kind of torture, but made that little computer kick in the afterburners.

        Now, let's make some sense of this all. Most children will not grow up to be programmers. It is kinda like having chemistry classes or biology classes does not cause everyone to be industrial chemists or doctors.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dracos ( 107777 )

      If kids were going to learn how to program with Minecraft (or anything else, for that matter), it would have happened organically by now.

    • Well, I would use a greek word describing my answer perfectly, but Americans can not pronounce it, so I go with battle star galactica: so shall we all! (Sarcasm: that is actually what the greek word means).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Good thing I'm not american then. However nor do I watch geeky sci fi series either so you lost me on that.

  • But procedural code is not the only computing paradigm - in fact, it is the worst one in many respects. Why are we teaching kids that flawed model? Why not instead teach some real computer science? If I were to teach them a language, I would pick a data flow language. I think that Microsoft is merely trying to fill the talent funnel for themselves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      I agree with the dataflow idea. I loved Prograph when it was a thing, now it is Marten. Nice graphical interface, debugger, etc.

  • Programming, or really any subject for the tender young beautiful children, needs to appeal to a basic need for them to have control over their environment. So I'm in favor of anything that accomplishes this.

    Whether it's mining dumb shit in a video game, or even murdering their parents.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Monoman ( 8745 )

      Yep. Probably the only time i have seen a large group of kids want to learn code was when MySpace was a thing. Kids wanted to learn how to make their MySpace page "cool". So out of a self interest kids that normally wouldn't be interested in coding were learning HTML and whatever else MySpace would let them do.

  • Gaining the hearts and minds while they are young and impressionable. Apple has run the same kind of operations in schools against kids. They don't care if kids learn to code, they want kids seeing the Microsoft logo and getting warm fuzzies.
  • ... learned it in Roblox.
  • If they want to get kids coding on microsoft technologies, they may as well get them used to the whole microsoft new technology lifecycle: fanfare introduction, coercive usage strategies (ie. automatic installation etc), continued disinterest from the coding community, EOL announcement, slap in the face for the few that wasted the time to learn.
  • ...(and it wouldn't be the first time) but my children (6 and 9 years old) are learning to program with Scratch [mit.edu] on a Raspberry, thank you!
  • Hey - typing this from a Linux machine, so save your judgment.

    My first language was MS Basic on an 8bit TRS-80 machine. At the time that was fun, but nothing like today.

    Today machines have amazing graphics and GUI front-ends. If I were learning to code today and was young, I would be picking something fun to do. From my perspective, I am glad Microsoft is encouraging kids to engage. Would you rather have your kids sitting around drooling over TikTok or YouTube videos?

    Encourage this please.

    Maybe a fe

  • As a kid, I learned to code with GWBasic.
    Why?
    1. I can run each command individually to see what it does.
    2. Simple commands that give you access to Graphics and Sound.
    3. No well defined structure and practices other than incrementing you line count by 10 or 100 so you can fill in the gaps without renumbering them.

    In school we were given Logo to code in. However while it still fits the reasons above, When I was 10, I didn't like to think in terms of degrees and angles, but just X and Y concordance. But Bas

  • They will probably have to introduce a simpler domain-specific language that tightly fits Minecraft. JavaScript/C# style is just too confusing for most newbies. It probably should resemble a cross between VB and COBOL. Rough draft:

    if current block within 10 units of block set "platform X" then
            reverse direction
    end if

  • As a Middle School Computer teacher, this actually looks good. The first, and probably most important point, is that it is something that the kids already want to do. I am in the process of looking at it, but it seems to be pretty well developed.

    There really is very little out there that is free, well-paced, and features a compelling theme.

  • One aspect that I find continually frustrating about gaming projects that purport to teach programming, such as this one, is that they tend to offer Python as the only available choice for students who wish to use any programming language that requires actually typing code.

    Why only Python? Why not, say, Ruby, Scheme, or even Haskell?

    In college, the first programming language that I learned in a course that counted toward the Computer Science major was Scheme, not Python. Furthermore, I learned to think in

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