Help me teach Minetest-based coding camp this Summer

[hatchquest]

I am looking for a programmer (Lua) within Minetest community located in the San Francisco Bay area who might be interested in running a week-long coding camp for kids. Also, anyone who may be interested in being camp's guest presenter over video link on topics related to Minetest game development (paid).

[hatchquest]

Some details on this camp. The focus is on coding skills so some basic introduction to Lua language will be offered, with some examples in Minetest on how to apply each logical statement, etc, so that there are live examples for some practice with learning materials... any advise on how to make this process effective?

Also, is anyone have or know any well-commented mods (instruction-like) that would be a good fit as example projects, so the students can go through and review how the logic of the code works? I think such examples would be helpful for anyone trying to get into coding Minetest mods. Thanks.

[garywhite]

Sorry, I'm booked solid all summer. However, I would like to know if this is gonna be a physical event and, if so, where it will be held, as I live in the area

[hatchquest]

It will be held in downtown Santa Cruz, a week-long camp. No schedule or location yet.

Some background: I used to work at a tech education company where we were developing a Minecraft-based set of educational projects, with description of lesson plans. At the point when Microsoft yanked the sale of Minecraft's educational version we begun to work on transferring these lessons to Minetest engine. Later the company closed as owner decided to retire. Because I was the one directly working on the conversion, I am now attempting to use my past experience to reinvent what we were doing. I say reinvent because the Minecraft educational projects were a bit low-intensity for its academic impact and I think Minetest educational lessons can be much better and more effective education-wise, even comparing to what Microsoft is doing with its new Minecraft Education program. And I don't even need all that money they spend on purchasing Minecraft, with due appresiation for Minetest developers and its great community.

[rubenwardy]

Sounds interesting! Make sure to ask plenty of questions, and update us with your progress :)

Whilst talking about the project would be something I'd be willing to do, I'm not sure what times I'll be available over the summer, so it would depend on when you'd need a conference, and for how long. And whilst I'm a core developer, I mostly do small things like fix bugs, add features to the GUI and modding, and review pull requests, so it's probably better to get someone like paramat, sfan5, or nerzhul (not sure how willing they'd be).

[Open_Future]

Hi,

I'm an elementary teacher in Canada. I use Minetest with my students from time to time. I would love to help out if possible in terms of ideas and testing. I've been wishing I knew how to make a make of Canada (or other countries) that has the basic physical regions, borders, bodies of water and other basic features but on a small scale. Is this possible?

[AccidentallyRhine]

I continue to be amazed at how many educators there are around here.

[sofar]

Sadly, I'm a state too far north, otherwise I'd raise my hand. There are quite a few of us that have used Minetest in the classroom (including me, for a short programming class to grades 6-8) or that are working on making minetest usable in the classroom otherwise. Given that I'm in the same timezone, however, I would encourage you to use the chance to connect with developers like Rubenwardy, me and others to figure out what the code writing part could do for your efforts. Since you have until next summer, there is a lot of time to address gaps and issues.

There are also other teachers active in several threads to improve minetest for the educational environment, please make sure you cross post and see if other teachers can help you, and vice versa!

[hajo]

The focus is on coding skills so some basic introduction to Lua language will be offered...
any advise on how to make this process effective?

Have you seen rnd's basic-robots, tutorial, example-programs, etc. ?

Also, at the robots-server is a tutorial-area with about 20 bots
that show various simple programs, starting with some basics.

Those robots might be easier to handle than writing mods,
and also do something fun and/or useful.

Do you have a plan what kind of problems/exercises/projects
you want to pose ?