Minecraft is one of the games taking up hours of the time for your kids. When kids play this blocky world game, they are introduced to a lot of creative potential within themselves. And they are encouraged into harnessing their creative bone to come up with the biggest fantasy tower or a small farming homestead.
While to parents, it may seem like a waste of time. While there is a lot to be learned, at least when it comes to coding classes for kids with the help of Minecraft. You may be wondering how a game can teach kids to code. In this article, we are explaining the same. Let’s take a look:
Post Contents
How does Minecraft Teach Coding?
Minecraft employs a simple 1 x 1 block structure to make up the world and objects in the game. In a way, it is similar to how coding uses 1s and 0s to create a whole new app, software, website, or program.
Computers communicate in binary. Once you understand the basic way computers communicate and function, learning to code will become incredibly easier for you.
Learning to code can not only help kids to secure a stable future, but it also helps in their mental and congenital growth. It improves their creativity, problem-solving skill, and mathematics.
Is Minecraft a Good Coding Introduction for Kids?
The best way to engage in coding classes for kids is to work on their motivations and interests. Minecraft, at its core, is a world-building game everyone loves with subtle introductions to coding mechanisms. Using Minecraft, you can teach your kids something useful in a fun and enjoyable manner.
It can also be enhanced with mods, which are strings of code that modify the game from inside. Mods can be used to create monsters, give the player more health, and modify NPCs into doing certain things.
Usually, these mods can be downloaded through a third-party website. Players also share their self-made mods with the community for everyone.
Learning to modify Minecraft is a good stepping stone to learning to create and manipulate code for other programs.
Do Kids Understand Its Coding?
Coding languages contain numbers, digits, and a string of words, making it difficult for the newbies to get a grasp on it. Children, especially, find having to deal with such complicated strings a daunting task.
Nevertheless, Minecraft: Education Edition is specially designed to cater to these issues and provides a visual way of learning to code with block coding. Block coding is the process of arranging blocks of pre-written codes that can be dragged and dropped to execute certain functions.
Thus, visual programming can be used to familiarize yourself with strings of code and their placement so you can write your own codes as you grow more confident in your ability.
Moreover, since Minecraft allows immediate implementation, you can see exactly what you are doing to the game in real-time. Minecraft: Education Edition runs the program and the game simultaneously, allowing players to hop between gameplay and coding with ease.
What Coding Language Does Minecraft Use?
It can teach you a plethora of coding languages, with each differing in terms of complexity and functions.
Minecraft uses Java as its base coding language. Java is used to run a lot of computer programs, sometimes in conjunction with other languages. It is one of the simplest and straightforward computer languages that has been in use for ages.
When it comes to learning to code, all languages might seem complicated, and it is only after one has practiced and familiarized themselves with the language for a while that they can use it to their advantage. This is why kids need to get their hands on coding at an early age. It helps them develop an understanding of how coding works and how they can delve into more complicated aspects of it.
What is Minecraft: Education Edition?
Minecraft education edition is a more evolved and interactive version of Minecraft. It teaches the kids the coding in a fun way. The education version contains certain programs and features that are lacking in the original one. It was specially designed to cater to the coding and communication aspects of the game.
The education version contains tutorials and instructions to help kids code and modify the game according to their interests.
Minecraft education edition is different from the original one. They developed this version to use in a classroom to teach kids the basics of computer programming. It allows as many as 30 people to join the game without the need for any server. Teachers can modify it to control which blocks are available to the players and where they can or cannot place them. It also allows you to limit the players’ movements to one specific area of the map.
There is a range of lesson plans that one can download and different ones focusing on different age ranges and the subjects that need to be taught.
