I am commenting on some of the concrete ideas on making Minetest an educational tool posted here.
It’s a bit old, but I comment anyways.
Fist something off-topic:
- Minecraft connects to Internet servers which may have inappropriate chat.
OMG!!! It connects to the INTERNET!! Where REAL PEOPLE are! Where people may say WEIRD STUFF!!! But who thinks about our children???
We have to shield all that children from the lands of anarchy, chaos and deaht!!
OK, now back to topic:
* Reading/Writing - teachers/students create signs with instructions on them.
Hell no!
This requires that you already can read and write. Especially handwriting can definitely NOT be learned by that.
Bad idea.
* Math - inventory and crafting requires counting blocks. Haggling trading prices with villagers and friends.
Nope. Both games are not going to teach that. You already have to know how to calculate shit to actually use that.
* Geometry - working with 3D blocs x,y,z
I agree that there can be made some use here. For example, to introduce into the cartesian coordinate system. Because Minetest’s world is a cube, this would work perfectly.
Maybe a few other basic geometry problems can be presented here, but overall I think the educational value here is rather limited. You are restricted to squares and cubes, and nodeboxes extend this to rectangles and cuboids but that’s it. Trianguar shapes only appear by accident and circles, ellipses and sphere are a complete taboo.
* Geography/Environment
- Worlds are huge - use maps, compass, sun, moon, to not get lost.
Yeah, sure! Using the moon for orientation works perfectly in real life!!!! ;-)
Also this does not take in account that Earth is sphere-like, not cube-like. And, and, and, …
And about maps: I think usage maps could be taught much better by actually going outside! ;-)
- North East South West - is very useful when going on long journeys and coming home again.
Oh, God. This is complete bogus and should NOT be taught like this.
The concepts of the four cardinal directions do not really apply to Minetest, actually.
Having a “North” and a “South” implies that you have two poles on a sphere. Where in the
cube that makes the Minetest world are those two poles?? ;-)
This is a very faulty method to teach cardinal directions.
But this didn’t stop modders to create compasses anyways which are labelled that way. This may be OK for gameplay purposes but surely is NOT so for educatinal purposes, as it is completely misleading.
Actually, there is no North, East, South and West. What we have are simply left, right, front and back, but as absoulte directions, not relative. Hmmmm, why don’t those have names, by the way, like the cardinal directions?
To be consistent, “compasses” (compass imitations actually) should not be labelled with “N”, “W”, “S” and “E”, but with “+X”, “-X”, “+Z” and “-Z”.
- Layers of soil, rock, water, sand, minerals - observe how they interact with each other and plant life.
This could be actually a very good start, especially that layering thing.
It’s called MINEtest for a reason.
However, there are no real mods which reflect this well.
Even RealTest just introduces some ores (OK, a lot of them), but it is nowhere near of adding different layers of rock.
Far too many games basically only know one type of rock, which is “stone” and ores spawn according to the old cliché of “the deeper you dig, the more you find”. Pretty useless for educational purposes.
To be actualy useful to actually learn stuff about the real world, this requires a really good mapgen. One that accounts for different kinds of rock, for example metamorphic rock.
No known mapgen comes even CLOSE to that.
All we have is “Stone” and that’s basically it. Some mods introduce particular kinds of stone like “gneiss” but it really is totally unsystematic and even worse, they spawn like ores.
Also, most mapgens know really only one way to generate ores, that is, in clusters. That again is true for only a subset of minerals, veins are also pretty important, for example.
So a lot of work needs to be done on mapgens to be of ANY educational value. But more importantly, we have to teach OURSELVES first about stuff before we can validly have the audacity to claim that we can teach others with this game.
But it were implemented, there may be SOME use to that, because knowledge of geology basics can help you to find certain. If you know that MINERAL X only appears in STONE Y, you are basically forced to learn some basics.
Dwarf Fortess is of particular interest here, because it has a very sophisticated mapgen with a complex layer structure. Also, D
Since geology is not a trivial matter, to be of ANY educational value, it might be very useful to have some real experts on the matter on bord. For now, this also is not the case. At all. And I really don’t know jack about geology to be honest.
But about plant life: No, that does not really convince me. Even the most sophisticated plant mods are still very abstract when compared to the real world.
How is this supposed to teach even the most basic basics of biology?
* Social Skills - working together to accomplish a task:
- replicate a historical building/site/battle/etc.
- create and share a puzzle, maze, or adventure - requires reading, writing, communicating.
- Friendly villagers will trade with you for a cost/bargain.
- Manage scarce resources ( food, diamonds, tools, etc ).
… and learning how everything of this fails because of griefers. And that the “solution” for this is by locking everything down and creating a permission society. Great “social skills” you have. ;-(
OK, there may be some benefits here, but to be honest: I really can’t say anything about social skills, actually, because I don’t have many. xD
- Minetest - Mesecons & Technic - craft and solar panel to a charging station to charge cutting lasers, chain saws etc.
- Logic chips allow you program code and learn software concepts: variables, loops, condition statements, objects etc.
* Technology & Science
- built in logic, wiring, programming.
Well, THIS is the point which makes the most sense to me. Mesecons basically forces you to understand logic gates in order to fully use it. And for advanced stuff there are Lua controllers and even µC controllers, which can be a start into actual programming. And it makes completely sense: You learn how to program while sitting at a computer. Sure, why not?
And I haven’t looked into Digilines that much, but it sure sounds promising as well.
The potential here is surely HUGE.
HOWEVER, it should not be forgotten that Mesecons is purely based on logic. There are only two states, one and off. You can power a wire just by installing a NOT gate. So Mesecons should not be confused with actual electronics.
And I don’t think Technic is a good example for education, it stresses WAY to much on the “fiction” side of “science-fiction”.
I initally wrote about teaching and learning stuff. I probably want to write more here later, especially about the idea of using Minetest in
schools.
