Sorry, kids. Microsoft is turning Minecraft into an 'educational tool' Microsoft is to launch a dedicated educational version of Minecraft which it hopes will be used in classrooms globally – a move that will be sure to put kids off the hugely popular game. Back in 2014 Microsoft bought the game from Swedish developer Mojang for $2.5bn (£1.7bn). More than 54 million copies of Minecraft have been …
Don't play it myself but do help the IT teacher at the local primary. It seems sufficient for their programming purposes. They're toying with the idea of dropping the windows machines completely as the maintenance is more than 'sticking in a new PI2' if anything goes wrong.
Hasn't Minecraft on the Pi somewhat stalled?
Unfortunately yes, which is the #1 reason my kids have old x86 boxes instead of Pis. But the Pi version does have one feature that makes it ideal as an education tool that, to my knowledge, no other version has: a Python console. The kids can write some Python code and instantly see the result in their game. It's quite useful for teaching them fundamental coding concepts.
It is available on Raspberry Pi at no cost, ... at the moment.
That's not exactly the Minecraft that the kiddies know and love. Creative mode only, no monsters, not even all the blocks available in the regular version. Heck, even the mobile version has more blocks. And you can just forget about dungeons and strongholds and the enderdragon. And, most importantly for a huge chunk of Minecraft players, no mods at all other than the Python console.
So that school have to have windows 10...........When schools can't afford jack because of govt cuts.
In which case MS have two options: Either accept that World plus Dog really couldn't give a tinker's cuss about the abomination that is Windows 10, and that a W10-tied educational Minecraft will curl up and die. Or give away both free to academic institutions, as a necessary freebie to keep as many people as possible in the Windows fold.
If MS won't give it away, and the schools don't have the money, then maybe they have a choice: Stick with whatever they run now, or make a move to Ubuntu or similar. If you can drive a mouse you can drive a Windows computer, so being brought up on Linux wouldn't be any hardship. And as an employer, my business doesn't expect schools to have equipped pupils with any worthwhile knowledge of business software, so if the kids leave school familiar with Open Office and Mint that's not going to worry me at all.
"I will be the first to guess, it will only work on windows 10. So that school have to have windows 10. Just gonna' put that out there. When schools can't afford jack because of govt cuts."
Schools don't have to pay anything to upgrade, or downgrade, it's all covered under the campus site licence agreements. Which are, I will note, incredibly inexpensive for schools. Gotta get kids hooked while they're young and all, LOL.
That said I think computing in education needs to move a huge step back from such high level, abstract things as Minecraft and Windows. The Raspberry Pi is a huge step in the right direction, and needs to get pushed in education, along with other tools to teach the basic building blocks of computing.
Schools don't have to pay anything to upgrade, or downgrade, it's all covered under the campus site licence agreements.
Not true. For reference, I've been in a school district IT department for 12 years now.
The only part covered under the license agreements is the licenses. Now granted, that's a sizable percentage of the cost of an upgrade, but it's not even half of the total cost. We still have machines floating around with 1gb of RAM, and it's only in the last year that we've started getting machines with more than 4. By the time we get all the other software we need on the machines they'll need at least 6 to not run dog slow with Win10, so we'd end up buying $20,000 worth of RAM to upgrade all of our existing classroom computers (and, to be honest, some of them probably still couldn't handle it). Not to mention the thousands of dollars worth of time it would take the IT staff to install all that RAM and upgrade the OS on all those computers, plus the thousands more dollars in time spent troubleshooting all the problems that inevitably crop up after such a problem.
That said I think computing in education needs to move a huge step back from such high level, abstract things as Minecraft and Windows. The Raspberry Pi is a huge step in the right direction, and needs to get pushed in education, along with other tools to teach the basic building blocks of computing.
Maybe for programming classes, but as much as I like the Pi it simply can't do most of what we need computers to do. Our state testing software, for example, is only available for Windows and iOS (a lot of schools in this state have iPads). Our drafting classes use AutoCAD, and if you think that's ever going to run on a Pi then you've obviously never used it. And while it's possible to get a Linux machine joined to our domain (there's a Linux laptop joined to the domain within arms reach right now) doing so is a painful process.
We are, unfortunately, locked into Windows on multiple levels, as I would imagine 99% or more of all schools are.
Windows 10... that came free with any Windows 7 machine? On top of the usual school tier pricing?
There's a huge difference between what Microsoft does for individuals and what they do for organizations. I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of it, but in the past we haven't had some options with volume licensing that consumers get with one license (case in point, a consumer can upgrade an OEM licensed OS at a reduced cost or downgrade for free, which we couldn't do under volume licensing until recently).
Microsoft just make O365 fucking work, IMAP email login has now been broken for 3 days.
20/01/2016 19:33:34
Current Status: Engineers have determined that a code issue has been introduced with a recent build update. The IMAP protocol is unable to automatically load data from Exchange Online databases. Engineers are currently implementing a fix in order to remediate end-user impact.
User Impact: Affected users are unable to receive emails when accessing Exchange Online through the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). As a workaround, users may be able to access mail via the Outlook Web App (OWA).
Customer Impact: Analysis of incident scope indicates that a limited number of customers appear to be impacted by this event. However, those customers affected likely have a large number of users experiencing impact. Engineers have received a few isolated customer reports of this issue.
Incident Start Time: Monday, January 18, 2016, at 12:00 AM UTC
Estimated Restoration Time: By Friday, January 22, 2016, at 1:00 AM UTC
Preliminary Root Cause: As part of our efforts to improve service performance, an update was deployed to the affected infrastructure; however, the update caused a code issue that prevents the IMAP protocol from automatically loading data from Exchange Online databases.
Next Update by: Friday, January 22, 2016, at 2:00 AM UTC
I hate how children will leave school, with a microsoft cloud account by default... which presumably will start asking for cash somewhere down the line, or face their childhood classroom experiences and work... wiped.
Just like Google... get everyone an account, boost the numbers and hook 'em in. *blech*
Whatever happened to the schoolbook covered with brown wrapping paper?
Yup. Reminds me of my yoof, when, one day a crack team of soulsnatchers invaded our maths class and had us all open "Griffin Savers" accounts with Midland Bank Plc.
Couldn't even manage to spell gryphon correctly ;)
I believe that manoeuvre was perpetrated under the guise of being "educational" too.
Still, I suppose there's a lesson in there: You belong to whichever corporations happen to pwn your government. Get used to it.
I see a few governments have switched their school systems to Linux.
Not too painful if the country is developing, and doesn't have an existing legacy IT industry to make switching painful.
Still, I would love to see a government who's adopted Linux for governmental offices go in hard and kick Microsoft out of education completely.
>"I hate how children will leave school, with a microsoft cloud account by default... which presumably will start asking for cash somewhere down the line, or face their childhood classroom experiences and work... wiped."
Same here ...
France has just sold data of all French pupils to Microsoft in exchange for a € 12 Million from Microsoft. The initial, official report suggested France paid Microsoft €24 million for the service, the official report has been "amended", no moneys are mentioned anymore. Other reports suggest Microsoft paid France the money after SadNad paid a visit to Mr Hollande (French president, nothing to do with The Netherlands).
Note that French governmental bodies are required by law to call for tenders, however, this law does not apply when Microsoft in concerned ... This deal is for using "intelligent games" in classes, apparently, Minecraft. In the deal is also addiction to SharePoint, Office360, OneDrive (1Tb).
The French hospital fund also paid Microsoft 120 million over four years for licensing, again, without official, public call for tenders.
There is a "morality" document that Microsoft (main entity) signed, Microsoft may involve other Microsoft subsidiaries which are NOT REQUIRED to sign said document - it is written as such in the agreement. (just one of the flaws I saw while hovering over it until page 4).
I will, of course, send a registered letter to the local school authorities denying them the right to register any information regarding my offspring with private entities of any kind.
Note that the Linux package gcompris is developed (mainly) by French teachers.
"I see a few governments have switched their school systems to Linux."
Mostly third world African and similar countries where a 486 CPU is a fast PC.
" would love to see a government who's adopted Linux for governmental offices go in hard and kick Microsoft out of education completely."
So they would use technology and software that would be utterly useless experience in most of the real world?! For jobs the 99% required skills are Windows and Office.
> For jobs the 99% required skills are Windows and Office.
You appear to imagine that 'work' is sending memos to each other and fiddling with numbers until the 'right' answer is given in the bottom-right.
You seem unaware that there are factories, transport, farms, logistics, ... where 'work' is not sitting a cubicle typing on a computer. Even where 'work' involves accessing a computer this is most often entirely with business applications such as SAP.
But then you probably haven't been out in the real world yet.
> For jobs the 99% required COMPUTER skills are Windows and Office.
When you finally leave your mother's basement you will find that the world is much more varied than you have ever imagined.
The vast majority of jobs do not even require computer skills at all. Most of those that do require interaction with computers only require basic skills of using a keyboard.
"I hate how children will leave school, with a microsoft cloud account by default... which presumably will start asking for cash somewhere down the line, or face their childhood classroom experiences and work... wiped."
While I'm no fan of the commercialisation seen in schools, the Microsoft Cloud accounts they have at school are free for as long as they get to keep them (for many uni students, that's for life), and are essentially the same as a corporate account - they're on the school's domain, and use the education version of Microsoft's cloud platform, which is quite similar what is sold for enterprise. Their school account won't magically start requiring money to access. Some push may happen, on a school level, toward paid Microsoft services down the line, but it'd be a totally separate account.
"Has microsoft actually released a proper minecraft version since taking it over"
Yes - they already ported it to .Net and it's many times faster. Not to mention no need to run horrifically insecure crap like Java on your PC.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/apps/minecraft-windows-10-edition-beta/9nblggh2jhxj
My kid has been using the edu version of Minecraft in school this year and he's loved it. They've been building virtual Anderson shelters as part of a WWII project. They talk about what would've been in them, location away from the house, the visibility from the air, how many people would need to fit inside etc. and most importantly he's enthusiastic about the project and really learning the subject.
Making school more exciting for children is a good thing and Microsoft's intentions in providing fun and engaging tools should be praised.
I won't downvote this comment, as it's true that Minecraft could make for some very engaging classroom projects (if you can disguise learning as a game, that's a massive win), but the idea that Microsoft are doing this for anything resembling altruistic reasons is laughable.
Microsoft have form when it comes to shovelling shit into schools and getting them to pay for it. Mind you, that's generally true of all school IT suppliers.
>They've been building virtual Anderson shelters as part of a WWII project. They talk about what would've been in them, location away from the house, the visibility from the air, how many people would need to fit inside etc. and most importantly he's enthusiastic about the project and really learning the subject.
WTF???? No, seriously, WTF?
WWII is a subject that needs to be discussed, absolutely, the Nazis were evil beyond belief, certainly, but teaching kids how to build Anderson shelters in Minecraft?? Must be the UK (severely brain-dead, nostalgic of when Britain was more than a handful of islands), next, they'll be learning how to create the Waterloo battle field in Minecraft, or Agincourt? That is history, what's the use of an Anderson shelter when you have nuclear warfare ?
Of course, at least no time wasted learning useless crap like grammar, or proper reading ...
" children were being “bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel."
Because if they can't use these tools, they will surely be bored in the unemployment line.
I work with people who should be able to use these tools effectively, but can't, it's broken, it doesn't work blah, as I insert fingers into ears....
Most children learn all the basics of things like Powerpoint, word, Excel very quickly. However, the courses at school are much too long/slow, which means they get bored. It's not a question of NOT teaching these things, but teaching them, and getting a lot more in besides.
My son complained that his ICT lessons took three weeks on how to use a mouse and keyboard. Things he already knew how to use, just by existing in the modern world. Mind you, having met the ICT teacher, she was as much use a chocolate teapot. No longer works there, so I obviously wasn't the only one who thought that.
@J H 1
I wholeheartedly agree. But as someone that has worked in a school, I know the teachers have to teach to the lowest common denominator. You know the kid that pulls a "Scotty" picks up the mouse and says "Computer open a file..."
As someone who has seen IT education I can say the students need these tools, because if you can't format your Internal Assessment for the IB in Work properly, you won't be passing.
Learning Word, Excel and Powerpoint is something that can be done in a matter of weeks. For some kids, maybe even days.
Ok, the more complex Excel stuff might take a wee bit longer, but most stuff is pretty much quick. I had to teach older adults on the marvels of the modern Office suite 11 years ago, and even the older ones were quick to catch on.
I do wish that ICT involved at least some kind of programming these days. Back in the 80s and even early 90s, it would usually involve some kind of programming, either BASIC or LOGO. MS Office is extremely boring, push that stuff down to higher level education.
School classes no. They're for learning. But games are for entertainment.
Minecraft is not meant to be in the first category.
And putting it there will kill it because;
a.) It becomes work
b.) It will need a "learning outcome" (See above)
c.) It will have to become time limited to fit it within a curriculum unit (primary) or a sequence of lessons (secondary).
d.) Teachers will have no time to fit it in to the school day properly.
e.) Neither do they have the time to get a grip on using it.(Most primary schools, for example, have some really interesting software bundled on their machines that is never used).
f.) Some parents, if not all, will be making a fuss about the kids spending all f*ing day f*ing around playing f*ing games when they should be learning from books/getting exercise.
@Richard Pinston
That's Minecraft and a Pi for learning about computery things. If that's how you want to use your Pi and Minecraft,and/or how you want to go about learning computery things fine. There is already Scratch in schools, when it is used.
( You inter alia could make the same argument for using LOGO and the LISP programming language it was built upon.)
But that's rather different to the idea of using Minecraft as an educational tool in its own right. And even then still contains most of the objections above
Or at least a motivational one. It's proven to be a remarkable asset for teaching my 5 year old about how to work a computer. I've used it to stealthily encourage him to learn everything from basic troubleshooting ("It crashed? Why don't you take a look at the log while I'm fixing dinner and see if you can tell me why and then we'll figure out how to fix it.") to minor bits of programming ("No Buddy, I don't think there's a mod to do that. Why don't we make one?") to memory skills ("You lost your house? Well I can't help you there. You'll just have to remember where you came from and go back that direction till you find it.)
<i>"We hope to bottle the enthusiasm of Minecraft"</i>
...Speaking to my 10 year old, they've already missed the boat - as kids who were all into Minecraft last year are already moving on to the next best thing.
(I forget the name of the new cool game - its loosely similar to Minecaft but is based on a higher resolution framework)
Who could have seen that coming when Microsoft threw all that cash at it?
It's not as if kids' crazes usually fade out after a while, is it? Especially when adopted by big business.
(Why isn't there an icon for laughing madly to the point of paralysis? Or at least one for heavy irony?).
Not sure which game that could be. The other one I know is similar to Minecraft with the whole "build stuff" thing would be Terraria, though that one doesn't have a "creative" mode. It does allow you to build stuff, but it's a 2D sprite game so it doesn't fit the "high resolution" description.
Playstation 3/4 has had the LittleBigPlanet game since 2008, which is indeed heavy on the creative angle (and also has the "creative mode" part). LBP2 came out sometime around 2011. LBP3 came out on 2014, IIRC it has even more new stuff so that might be the thing (given how the PS4 is now the main nextgen console).
Then there's Fallout 4, which isn't really focused on creativity but it does allow you to build stuff in your "house".
EDIT: Ah, my stepson to the rescue. It seems it might be DayZ, H1Z1 or similar games that seem to have been "inspired" by Minecraft. But they only resemble Minecraft on the "survival" aspect, he's not sure if they also have the creative stuff.
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