Minecraft - Did you know?

So, my husband and I have been in a bit of a Minecraft faze. Or rather, the Tekkit mod of Minecraft is what we've been playing every single night since Sunday. This has left me little time for blogging, which some of you may have noticed. All I've had time for is write short drafts with ideas for posts, so nothing is finished. We have lived in our own minecraft world building, mining and creating awesome things like lasers, machines and houses.

A sorting machine in Minecraft, which is what I want to build

So as I have been dreaming of minecraft blocks I have stated looking up a bit more around the game and what I found was very interesting. So I am going to use the standard phrase that I used when I was little to introduce what I found:

Did you know...?

That Minecraft is used to help the public be part of the design process when communities are being redesigned? Minecraft is working together with UN Habitat to provide a platform where anyone has the opportunity to be involved in the design process. This removes the knowledge barrier and helps the community to actually visualize the changes that can occur.

The link to Mojang blog announcement can be found here.

Did you know...?

That Minecraft is being used to help teach kids programming? The game is simple and children of young ages are often playing this game (A quick google gave me that the youngest was 3 years old). The game is also easy to mod (modifications to the game) with loads of information available on the internet. This means the kids are introduced early on to what is possible to reprogram. One oracle blogger posted that Minecraft was what introduced his kid to java programming

Did you know...?

Minecraft is a powerful tool in teaching kids many basic concepts, including searching for information, visual understanding, design. I found a blogpost from a mother about how she uses minecraft to teach her son with aspergers how to write and read.