Minecraft - from games to computer science in Ukraine

Viacheslav Polinovskyi, Valeria Osipova, and Mikhail Maksimov

from GoTeens, Ukraine.

Blog Translated form original Ukrainian to English.

Minecraft is a fun video game that can also teach programming skills. It's a great subject for education, and everyone can benefit from learning it. Parents can use their children's love of Minecraft to help them learn more. Kids love Minecraft, so they will be excited to learn about programming through it.

Minecraft is very popular game among children and teenagers in Ukraine. Children build their ideal universe, find friends by interests, get into a digital community that is not limited by geographical limits. They also master the spatialm of thinking and the rules of interaction with the metaverse. Bingo!

At the same time, the educational process can be deepened and, based on your favorite game, you can start learning programming. To do this, Microsoft has created a separate mode – Minecraft Education Edition. It allows you to create space in the same way, but with the help of another tool - block programming. Thus, every child can feel behind the scenes of the game – in the role of a programmer and game developer.

Both formats of interaction with Minecraft have their advantages. But when a child exclusively plays, they use the achievements of developers – this limits his imagination. We wanted to give space for children's creativity, to inspire them to feel like a creator, so we at GoITeens have developed two educational courses based on Minecraft Education Edition – for smaller Minecraft Kids  and older children in Minecraft.

To make this learning process gradual, while playing Minecraft, students, with the help of a teacher, experiment with the possibilities of the educational version of the Education Edition and see the connection with school subjects: mathematics, physics, science,chemistry in creative experiments, create their own projects and communicate with benefit between peers.

In order to create the world, the child learns programming logic and algorithms, uses loops and variables. She usesmathematical skills to calculate the construction of a particular building, and then the entire city, so that all the buildings do not overlap with each other. In fact, this is the work of a programmer architect. This is how we teach him and work with his imagination, and give him tools that allow him to create constructions faster and easier – that is, we give him the tools to scale his own skills.

What will a child learn in Minecraft at 7-8 years old?

We saw that children aged 7-8 have a great need for games, because this is how they learn about the world and develop. That is why, when developing our Minecraft Kids course, we made sure that students had the opportunity to combine their favorite game with the new features of Minecraft Education. 

Because of this, the load on the course increases evenly. Students come with different levels of knowledge and skills — someone hasbeen playing Minecraft for 3 years, and someone sees the game for the first time. Therefore, the task of the teacher in the first month of classes is to align children with knowledge and proficiency in the application, to teach basic things.

The work of Andriy Volynets, 8 years old

It was important for us that children at this age were able todo creative experiments, communicate with each other and at the same time learn. We noticed that when students start working with spatial objects, they have difficulty with math and calculations. Therefore, we have added many thematic classes to this course.So they train memory, attention, improve math skills and see a connection with the fact that  where school knowledge can be applied to life.

an example of how children learn arithmetic operations in Minecraft

Children can get acquainted with block programming in the Minecraft Education environment gradually: they control the assistant agent and place different blocks using three-dimensional coordinates. The teacher shows the programming exercises themselves in the classroom, explains how it works. From the beginning, they simply repeat after the teacher, and then they can experiment with the code.

We have designed the program so that without excessive loads in three months, students will get acquainted with the educational space sufficiently, and learn how to create mobs and change game modes. This will allow them to master addition and subtraction operations, get acquainted with linear programs, variables and event functions, work with relative coordinates and time.

The work of Alexandra Bondar, 8 years old

In order for them to be interested ineach lesson, we made the lessons thematic – all classes are held in the chosen topic. Each lesson receives interesting facts about animals, chemical elements and world attractions. We did this so that students from childhood understand that all things in the world are interconnected and they can develop their horizons at any opportunity.

Since it is still quite difficult for children of this age to program independently, they do their homework from the constructions "with their own hands", so that this work is done easily, with pleasure and without the help of adults. Also, manual constructions help students realize their need to play and show creative, architectural and design skills.

And in the second semester, when students get more code development, they already start creating their own independent projects.This transition from repetition to creating your own construction using code is very valuable and important for both the student and the teacher.

The work of Vladislav Symbol, 9 years old

The program is structured in such a way that in half a year students will begin to use command blocks and use block programming for construction. They will have cycles, calculations, sensors of random numbers, multiplication, division and total area calculation. They will learn tofollow the logic of mechanisms and create them independently, as well as present their project publicly. And all this against the backdrop of space exploration and the underwater world. And all this in 7-8 years!

We have been working on this program for several years and are constantly updating it to make surethat it best meets the actual needs of children. The program is developed by experienced teachers, Minecraft fans and people with pedagogical education who are in love with their work. The program changes and improves with each lesson.

Therefore,it is aimed at developing creativity, programming skills and mathematics. All this so that in nine months students learn how to work with NPCs, call a function with a parameter, deal with block programming and relative coordinates, and also create their quizzes and quests. Moreover, for the final, they will create sights of Ukraine, the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids of Machu Picchu,  The Colosseum and other majestic structures using code. Would you see the emotions of teachers at intermediate and graduation proobjects!

Colosseum of Artem Krainik and Nikita Botte, 10 years old

Why does Minecrafter need at aged 9-11?

For students from an older Minecraft course (9-11 years old), we have prepared a real kaleidoscope of travel! Using block programming, variables and algorithms, they build architecture that is considered the Wonders of the World: pyramids, hanging gardens of Semiramis, Taj Mahal, etc. These are huge structures that require a lot of code work and often teamwork. And we teach them it with pleasure!

We did our best to make students delighted and surprised by the results of the code action in this course. If only there was a desire not to work as before "manually" with constructions, cube to cube, but to learn how to design and program.

Therefore, we did everything this way, andstudents would program from the first day of study, because teenagers come for this. After meeting their future colleagues, they proceed to study the very principles of block programming. Create the first sections of flowers, using the cycles. And then they build three-story houses, the world of pyramids and a real football field.

The work of Roman Tymchyn, 10 years old

While working on this course, we made sure that students continue to enjoy their favorite game and additionally acquire the skills they need for their future career in IT. In order to become a great programmer in the future, we have added tasks for logical thinking to the program, teach them the rules of building code, help them learn the basic concepts of programming:  variables, conditional operators, loops, functions, arrays. That is, thanks to this, we lay the foundations of Computer Science.

In this course, we give a little more knowledge and load, because children of this age can already master more complex tasks. Therefore, here mathematics is a niche,more mathematical expressions to build larger structures. If the house, then the Empire State Building on 102 floors. If a zoo, then a huge one. If this is a game, then at the end of the second semester, students will already know how  to do two! And you know what? The kids are delighted with it. From the level of independence that they have thanks to their knowledge.

The work of Rostislav Kuznetsov, 12 years old

During the course, children also develop culturally, as the program includes various topics from history and art. But even in these topics, mathematics 🙂 is always involved

To this course, we added the ability for pichildren to learn how to work with 3D programming, coordinates, combinations, pointers and arrays at a deeper level. For example, with the help of pointers, they will program the agent to move, and you will see the result of this work in the next case from GoITeens students, where they built Independence Square and placed Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy there.

We are proud that in this course teenagers work fruitfully and with pleasure, become more attentive and focused, learn to "fix bugs", do homework with code. In this way, they begin to appreciate their work, understand the seriousness of even the slightest inaccuracy in the code. And we hear from many of them that when the work is done and you can already run the finished code many times,  And a  huge construction is built before our eyes in a few seconds – it is very motivating to learn.

It is incredibly gratifying that this course on block programming lays the foundation for understanding programming in general and develops children in the direction of Computer Science. Thanks to the acquired knowledge, the child will get used to programming, logical thinking and problem solving from an early age, which gives him the opportunity to develop much faster as a programmer in the future.

After completing the course, the student will be able to follow any path in programming that he chooses for himself, and we help him deal with his desires and abilities. After all, both a digital designer and a future game developer can grow on this block base.

The work of Ilya Yakimov, 11 years old

Today, it is a fact at GoITeens that 100% of children who complete the Minecraft Education course are already more consciously moving to the next development courses and want to link their future with software or game development. This means that theyreally fell in love with development, that is, our formula from games to computer science works!