'Minecraft' for PS4 & Xbox One Release Date, Price, Mods: Creators Testing Add-On to Teach Children How to Program
"Minecraft" has become wildly popular with children, letting them create whole worlds by building and breaking blocks.
But a U.S. company is working on an add-on to the game that will teach children programming skills while they play, The Guardian reported.
ThoughtSTEM plans to release LearnToMod in October. The add-on feature will allow kids to make their own modifications to "Minecraft" features. LearnToMod is currently being tested with 150 students prior to its public release and is expected to sell for $30.
"Kids are already spending ridiculous amounts of hours on Minecraft, so we thought this would be a good way to help them learn skills," said co-founder Stephen Foster.
LearnToMod will offer programing lessons designed for kids aged 8 through 15. Children will use Google's Blockly interface to manipulate the game's blocks to create code, instead of throwing them straight into a language like JavaScript or HTML.
"Minecraft" users who already know how to code can create modifications in the game and can share those mods with the game's community of players.
LearnToMod is not the first time "Minecraft" has been used to educate children. In 2013, Google worked with a couple of firms to develop an add-on called qCraft, which was designed to increase interest in quantum computing.
"It lets players experiment with quantum behaviors inside Minecraft's world, with new blocks that exhibit quantum entanglement, superposition, and observer dependency," Google said when qCraft was released.
"Of course, qCraft isn't a perfect scientific simulation, but it's a fun way for players to experience a few parts of quantum mechanics outside of thought experiments or dense textbook examples."
In other "Minecraft" news, developer 4J Studios has announced that it finished the PlayStation 4 version of the game and has submitted it to Sony for testing, according to IGN. The PS4 version is expected to be released this month.
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