I was a little dubious at first but another home educator told me it was definitely educational. Apparently it has something called red stone that makes use of logical components such as capacitors and logic gates as used in electronics. That sounded good as Dxh had been teaching Ram about logic gates.
We paid our money and off Ram went. Very quickly I realised that he was going to get a lot more out of it than just game play. Basically, it is a sandbox building game, where you can build a world, eat, sleep and get blown up! In no time he was building amazing castles with great detail. He even made guest bedrooms with chests (containing cake and explosives) for his friends. He has also built a library to die for, complete with three galleried floors, lighting and books.
The Minecraft world is based on cubes, which fascinated Ram, but it also means that he has to have a good understanding of how cubes work, as any other shape you want has to be made up from cubes.
Time management also has a part to play, which is something that doesn't come naturally to Ram. If you are not in a safe place by the time night falls, then bad things can happen!
But the biggest thing is the development of social skills, something that Ram needs a lot of work on. How? He joined up with two other home educated friends, and the Dxh set up a server for them so that they could all play in the same world together. This meant he had to communicate, and the easiest way to do that is via Skype.
My boy, the one who once, a long time ago, attacked someone with a Stanley knife because I was talking on the telephone, has started communicating via phone! Mind you, it isn't a phone call as most of us would recognise. They sit there for hours not talking to each other, and forget to say goodbye! But we are working on it.
The funniest thing though is when the monsters, called creepers, explode. He always uses noise cancelling headphones when on the computer so I can't hear what is going on. The first time he was playing he suddenly jumped a mile. I looked over at him and he had a look of shock on his face. A creeper had snuck up behind him and exploded, startling
him! Because he is so immersed in the world with his headphones on, it was a whole body experience!
There is more to playing a computer game than just the game itself. One lad (not home educated) has even written a song so that allowed us to talk about music. We have discussed architecture, geography (yes, water does flow to the lowest point!) electronics, and how to retrieve a deleted home directory! That actually happened when Ram was installing a mod in the terminal window, and accidentally deleted his home directory. He now knows what cd .. rm -rf means!
