A Simple Pixelated Game and the Future Generation of Programmers
If I told you that children at the age of 7 could learn conditional statements in programming, would you believe me?
Minecraft, developed by Mojang, is one of the internet’s greatest sensations and continues to consume the time of both children and adults alike. A neat little website called Minecraft Statistics shows that as of July 20th, 2020, there have been 71 million active players. This number only accounts for players who use a computer and have access to a multiplayer server. There are over 200 million copies of it sold across all platforms. Amidst COVID-19, Minecraft’s popularity has boomed yet again as many are stuck at home and trying to find a virtual platform to socialize with their friends and others. If you are at all familiar with Minecraft, having either played it on your own or seen other people play it, you would know of this game’s addictive nature. But what if I told you that Mojang has been putting this addictive nature to good use?
I now present Minecraft: Education Edition(EE). Minecraft:EE is able to teach children various core subjects such as language arts, math, history, science, and art/design. My main focus, however, is on it’s ability to teach kids computer science. After kids become familiar with the game-play of Minecraft, if they aren’t already, they are soon taught about the usage of redstone, a core feature of Minecraft. Redstone allows a player to send signals, such as whether a button is on or off. A very simple example would be placing a button next to a door. Pressing the button would briefly send a “on” signal through the redstone to the door, therefore opening the door. Having been a counselor at an elementary school, I have seen 7–8 year old students use much more complex logic with redstone than simply opening or closing a door — they just don’t understand that it’s a conditional statement yet.
That’s the beauty of the education edition. Many children will feel as if they are just playing a game, but they are learning so much more than that. Imagine building a complex contraption that utilizes a pressure plate which, when stepped on, will shoot out an arrow on whoever steps on the pressure plate. Sounds a lot like a scene straight out of Indiana Jones. Yet if we were to ask a child who is familiar with Minecraft and its redstone mechanics, this contraption would take less than a minute to create. All they need is a pressure plate, some redstone dust, a dispenser, and don’t forget the arrows.
I won’t go into the logic of actually recreating the contraption, but I can tell you that, combined with the button that opens a door, we have already covered two ways conditional logic is used in Minecraft. The craziest part is that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what some kids are capable of. A quick YouTube search with some combination of the words “redstone”, “Minecraft”, and/or “8 years old”, would demonstrate to you just how astonishing some of these creations are.
As much as I would love to dive into the rabbit hole that is Minecraft redstone usage, I do believe that’s a topic best explored on one’s own time because it is an absolute time sink. Minecraft:EE brings to life conditional logic alongside other computer science concepts such as loops, debugging code, and even creating animations. I started to learn how to code in my early 20’s, but imagine becoming familiar with programming at the age of 8? By making kids aware of how these contraptions work and associating them with the concepts used in computer science, Minecraft:EE effectively gives many kids a huge head-start in a high demand STEM field.
After a little bit of digging, I discovered a Minecraft forum that did a demographic poll and found that 19.8% of the player base is under the age of 15. Given the 71 million active players, 20% of that population would be roughly 14.2 million. Of course, these numbers are purely estimates and the sample size of the poll was quite small (931 participants), but it still goes to show that many Minecraft players are children and many of these children are becoming familiar with computer science concepts way before they even know what computer science is.
In our digitized world where every corner of society is now influenced in some manner by technology, it comes as no surprise that learning computer science at an early age is not just a thing of passion or a hobby, but rather a necessary skill in the 21st century. As we progress towards an increasing remote world where school, work, and recreation can be performed in the comfort of your own home, technology is the one thing that can still bring us all together. So next time you see a child playing Minecraft, don’t be upset that they’re playing games or wasting time, be excited because they’re creating our future — one block at a time.
