

What's more, using mods, you can quickly create things that would otherwise take a long time to build in the game, such as mountains or massive dungeons, or create custom types of blocks. It's entirely up you whether you as a player whether spend your time building elaborate castles, fighting monsters, or exploring the the game world.

But the coding skills kids learn through the web application actually help them game special advantages in the game. Instead of using the game as a virtual classroom, ThoughtSTEM built its own interface that exists outside of Minecraft. So they launched a class for kids between the age of eight and 15 that teaches kids to code their own modifications to Minecraft - and even earn college credit at the University of California in San Diego while doing it.īut LearnToMod is a little different from most other Minecraft-based educational programs. But Foster and his co-founders Sarah Esper and Lindsey Handley soon noticed that many of their students were already avid Minecraft players, and it would make more sense to create a class that would harness the passion their students already had for Minecraft.

The idea was to hook students on CodeSpells so that they'd be motivated to learn the programming skills they needed to advance within the game. We thought this would be a good way to help them learn skills.'ThoughtSTEM started out offering in-person classes in San Diego, Granite Bay, and Oakhurst, CA based on a game called CodeSpells that Foster co-created as a PhD student at the University California. 'Kids are already spending ridiculous amounts of hours on Minecraft. "So we thought this would be a good way to help them learn skills." "Kids are already spending ridiculous amounts of hours on Minecraft," says Stephen Foster, the co-founder of ThoughtSTEM, the company that's built the LearnToMod module.
