hajo wrote:TheReaperKing wrote:Just FYI I am working on a educational version of Minetest for my students
What is the difference between a regular and an educational version of Minetest ?
I mean, beyond some admin-commands for world-control / herding students,
a simple one-button-startmenu
(plus a tiny setup-button for the regular main-menu),
and maybe disabling potentially dangerous stuff, like lava, tnt etc. ?
Its a good question... for us - well - for me... I have created an environment that kids can take off in that school administrators can embrace.
For instance, the building of the school replica drew the interest of school administrator while immediately giving the students a place of familiarity and comfort. I can testify that the more accurate the better. This was our first week live and the kids checked it out top to bottom. I even had a student find one of two access points to the roof (which exist in real life), and find a soda vending machine I hid there, expecting kids to find it weeks from now.
In the school's real world playground, I created a small market place and filled it with ways for them to buy and sell things they mine, cut, and craft. This is huge for us because many of our students struggle identifying and using money. I modified the currency mod to use 'US currency (including coins) and have forced the students to use exact change through the shops which means they have to craft it. For example, a student might find a shop selling a wooden door for 50 cents, but the shop wants it paid in five dimes, not fifty pennies, of ten nickels, or two quarters, but five dimes. If the child has the cash but not in dime form, they go to the crafting grid and craft dimes from pennies, nickels, quarters, dollars, etc. using recipes that are shapeless.
The school administrators see children learning about the various denominations of cash, teachers see children using math skills to craft money, and kids LOVE using 'real' money to buy in-game items.
I've also implemented Google classrooms, and aligned the student account logins with their minetest logins as the students have not been able to remember these credentials consistently. As any game player knows, if you have to log in to play your favorite game, you will memorize it. Already this week, I've seen dramatic improvements in student's getting logged in on their own. With google classrooms they have to log in twice a session.
They need to go to google classrooms because it is there that I offer cash reward activities, such as report writing on local areas of interest highlighted within the minetest world we are building, or scavenger hunting using skills like clock reading and riddle solving while roaming the existing areas of development. The cash rewards give students not interested in mining and crafting a whole new way to manage their minetest lives.
I removed swords (makes school admins happy) but players can still get hurt and harm each other meaing they still have to learn personal responsibility. I left the sword recipes and just allowed them to create healing devices (Minecraft players were surprised and somewhat delighted with the change).
For me - the key is to get them working together, incorporating educational goals, and soon, introduce modding to them. They will be creating skins, and textures, and more if all goes as planned.
Setting up a one button start would be great - but thats beyond me at the moment... maybe next week? LOL