Showing posts with label Minecraft Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minecraft Week. Show all posts
Friday, 14 November 2014
Rounding off Minecraft Week at ReaditDaddy with Minecraft Stories - Tales from the Rock Face
Labels:
Minecraft Week
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| Once Upon a Time - In a not-too-distant Blocky Land... |
One of the unexpected things to come from our dalliances with this massive world are the stories that emerge as you begin to play. When Charlotte was younger and couldn't quite get to grips with a gamepad, she would 'direct' me while we were building, mining and crafting and it was often quite hilarious to hear her running commentary. Almost as if she was narrating a story as we played along.
For example...
The Case of the Roaming Wolf
As soon as Charlotte learned that certain animals could be tamed, she wanted a wolf. Wolves are often quite solitary creatures in Minecraft and they're quiet (no howling at the moon) so you usually only find them when you practically fall over one. But a tamed wolf can be a loyal companion and a staunch defender of your character if you're cornered by nasties.
We spotted a wolf in the distance and so the grand chase began. Charlotte excitedly shouted out instructions..."Go there, no he's there. You need to jump higher he's getting away!"
We caught up with the wolf and completely forgot that you need bones to tempt wolves into being domesticated and there's only one way to get bones in Minecraft. You need to fight skeletons, and they're wily tough and sneaky!
The next night we prepared. I'd made iron armour which I clad our character in from head to foot. Stupidly I'd run out of iron though and had to make a wooden sword. Fairly well protected and armed with - well basically a decorative twig - we stole out into the night in search of skeletons...
It didn't take long for them to find us rather than the other way round. The telltale giveaway "Ka-TWANG!" of an arrow embedding itself into the earthen bank next to us announced the arrival of our foe. Though we fought gallantly, we lost horribly and all our belongings were scattered, we died, and woke up in the more comfortable environment of our little snug wooden hut once again.
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| Take that, varlet! |
The next night we vowed revenge. Recovering our stuff by daylight (including, thankfully, our armour) we spent a day or two mining more iron for a better sword.
Once again, out we strode into the night and once again a skeleton found us before we found him. We got lucky, the skeleton chose the wrong place for a battle as we managed to knock him off the top of a steep cliff. Weakened by the fall we polished off that skeletal nasty in a couple of swipes of our new iron sword and were rewarded for our efforts with a lovely tasty looking bone.
Of course, needless to say after our grand efforts we couldn't find that elusive wolf for days afterwards!
Minecraft encourages reading!
The game is brilliant just from the perspective of hearing people's anecdotes about their own Minecraft lands and creations, and their own experiences playing the game. Another unexpected benefit of playing is that Minecraft is a good way to help your little ones practice their reading. Not just the fact that the game pops up with in-game messages and information, but it's a great sandbox playpit to try out a few wordy things of your own as well.
More creative parent players might want to try some of the following...
Read More
The game is brilliant just from the perspective of hearing people's anecdotes about their own Minecraft lands and creations, and their own experiences playing the game. Another unexpected benefit of playing is that Minecraft is a good way to help your little ones practice their reading. Not just the fact that the game pops up with in-game messages and information, but it's a great sandbox playpit to try out a few wordy things of your own as well.
More creative parent players might want to try some of the following...
- Building giant letters. It's really easy to build A, B, C - try playing together and building your own letters and words for your child to shout out!
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| This is actually a neat little module for Minecraft Edu! Making Alphabet Blocks! |
- Using Minecraft Signs to leave each other messages. You can pop signposts around a landscape and build a reading 'treasure hunt' in the game, with clues to follow to the next location (this takes a bit of setting up but building arrows to point to the next 'clue' or sign would be a really fun combination of building and reading
- Shout out the name. This is probably better with younger children, as you can use Minecraft's various animals, plants and objects to set up an alphabet area in your Minecraft world. Gather together items that start with the same letter from 'build' mode, and place them in your landscape
Thursday, 13 November 2014
Minecraft Week continues with a look at Minecraft Edu - Can a game really be a valuable classroom aid? Mojang believes it can...!
Labels:
Minecraft Edu,
Minecraft Week,
Mojang
Can you imagine sitting down to computer class, expecting the usual boring 'how to use a word processor' lessons, or the use of some dry educational website, but instead your ICT Teacher announces "Today we're going to play a game. Today we're going to play Minecraft!"
Charlotte, for one, would be ridiculously excited but can Minecraft actually be used as a valuable educational tool?
The ethos behind Minecraft Edu - A special school-friendly remix of the traditional Minecraft game - believes that children can engage with learning valuable programming and 'net citizen' skills through the creative and social side of Minecraft, not to mention some of the aspects of the game that lend themselves well to creating machines, circuits and problem solving.
With educational discounts, and a very easy setup and administration suite, Minecraft Edu can be set up by a class and enjoyed in minutes. Class and teacher-led activities fit into the Minecraft framework, encouraging children to collaborate on projects and problem solving. Children can create their own in-game avatars and use these to 'see' themselves in the class's virtual world.
30 million Minecraft Edu users are utilising this intuitive learning program for various areas of study, from STEM to history, from art and design to programming.
Dive in and investigate Minecraft Edu by visiting the project's webpage, officially supported by Mojang, the original creators of Minecraft.
Monday, 10 November 2014
It's Minecraft Week! Welcome to a week of Minecraft book, educational and crafty goodness!
Labels:
Minecraft Books,
Minecraft Week,
Stories
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| A Creeper. You really do NOT want to get this close to one, trust us! |
We're kicking off a week of themed posts this week, celebrating something that you wouldn't normally associate with a children's book blog. But bear with us, you see the phenomenon known as Minecraft may be a complete mystery to you, but I guarantee that most of your kids will know their creepers from their endermen, their obsidian from their netherwrack.
I've loved Minecraft since I first encountered it back in 2011. Charlotte took to Minecraft like a duck to water, initially directing me to build things at her behest but now picking up the joypad and wading into the complexities of Minecraft all on her own.
I've loved Minecraft since I first encountered it back in 2011. Charlotte took to Minecraft like a duck to water, initially directing me to build things at her behest but now picking up the joypad and wading into the complexities of Minecraft all on her own.
To help befuddled grown-ups through the minefield that is Minecraft, we've got a series of posts coming up but first of all, let's delve into the part of Minecraft that unexpectedly emerges once people start playing.
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| The Minecraft landscape. It might look blocky and basic but looks can be VERY deceiving! |
So what on earth is Minecraft?
If you've been living at the bottom of a deep dark mineshaft with no sticks and charcoal to make torches with, the whole Minecraft phenomenon might've completely passed you by. Minecraft entered official alpha testing way back in 2009 / 2010, the work of Markus (Notch) Persson and a small team of developers at Mojang, beavering away in a tiny studio in The Netherlands (quite apt really!)
Minecraft's first version was basic and rudimentary, lacking most of the features we know and love today (the first versions didn't even feature crafting - the way you delicately gather ingredients and materials to make other things in the Minecraft world).
Several versions later, Minecraft exploded onto the Indie games scene with a colossal TNT-fuelled BOOM! People started to realise that essentially what they had was the infinite power of pixellated creation in their grubby little mitts.
To date, 17,136,328 people have picked up a copy of Minecraft, available on just about anything you can think of (PC, Mac, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Android and iOS). Minecraft is now the world's biggest gaming community and Minecraft players and engineers wear their colours proudly (I usually kick around with a couple of Minecraft charms tied to my work bag!)
Whether playing on their own or collaborating with others, Minecraft engineers soon begin to turn the various blocks and items found in these randomly generated worlds into amazing constructions. Name just about any building in the world, or element of popular culture and you can bet someone somewhere has rendered a fairly good likeness in Minecraft.
It's like owning a never-ending set of Lego at its most basic, but for more experienced Minecraft players and engineers, there's a lot more to it besides.
You can take a look at Minecraft by hopping over to the Official Minecraft Website here. You can also play a demo of the game, running in your internet browser, to see if it's your cup of tea...!
We'll be continuing our posts throughout the week, starting off by looking at Egmont's superb range of Official Minecraft Books. A quartet of brilliant 'how-to' guides that will get you off to a flying start with Minecraft Basics, Crafting, Combat and Redstone!
Important Note!
Minecraft has evolved into a huge (and largely uncontrolled / unmonitored) online community. Please exercise caution when letting your little ones loose on the Internet to look at Minecraft stuff and always take a look at anything they've flagged up first. The majority of Minecraft users are lovely folk but do take care online, particularly in multiplayer online games.
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