Something that's occurred to me is that although this sounds like a good idea in theory, you are just not the man for the job. I'm not harshing your understanding of electronics, logic, or anything like that. But from your extremely long response that you posted I've come to this conclusion. You are a person that has the potential to turn kids off of minecraft. If their first impression of minecraft is that it's some rigorous and complicated game that tries to teach then it can really be a bad first impression. Minecraft is something yu have to play at your own pace and style, otherwise it's no fun.
You have the potential to teach something very important to young people, however I don't think minecraft is your best option. There are a lot of tools that teach circuits, electricity, logic, arithmetic, etc. But it you turn just one kid off of this game it's frankly unforgivable.
Are you kidding me? Redstone is the ONLY reason that I still play minecraft. I know not everyone feels the same, but I enjoy a strong sense of accomplishment when I can make all kinds of mechanisms using genuine, real-world principals. It's a ton of fun, and I think the kids will love it!
Classic mode only allows for building objects - but they don't do anything! They just sit there and look cool. But redstone is different. It MOVES and has all kinds of possibilities. If anything, the class will draw kids into minecraft. That said, it also makes logic much less intimidating, which will get kids interested in that as well. So it's a win-win.
I'm going to say I don't think it's a good idea. I know RL circuits and learning redstone was a bit of a challenge because it really does NOT work the same in a lot of ways.
Maybe if you focused on just logic gates it would be fine, since the logic gate theory is going to be fairly close to real life. But as far as how redstone circuits are setup, it may actually be detrimental to any aspiring engineers. There's no voltage and no current; it throws real circuit theory out the window.
I spent a night playing on Tekkit and really enjoyed it. I made an adder, and tried to teach the turtle how to 3d print it. Only after I finished did I realize that the turtle refuses to place certain blocks in 1.3 Apparently this is fixed in 1.4, does anyone know how often Tekkit updates?
I also built some Langoliers. My pretty turtles are destroying the landscape with terrifying efficiency, though they are not yet self replicating (this is just a matter of time; they are crafting some things). I've yet to figure out an efficient method for mining diamonds (yes, I know where they spawn), but I will still have to wait for a Tekkit update before I can properly build what I imagine.
Tekkit, most importantly, decreases the barrier of entry. There is no lengthy, confusing mod installation process rife with pitfalls. The students can install Tekkit, and start playing. Great! This makes my ultimate goal of independent experimentation all the easier.
I think a RSS is a good resource. We might use it for ~5 minutes. I think that it decreases the appeal of the whole thing. At that point, why not just have them use Logisim? (because no one wants to take a Logisim class)
Did you ever notice that you learned your colors before you knew that the human visual system has 4 types of photosensitive receptors, whose chemical signals undergo a distributed lossy compression that approximates the Difference of Gaussians algorithm? Frankly, that's because knowing your colors is more important. The majority of people do not deal with vision on such a level and do not care about things like perceptually uniform color spaces. Yeah, plenty of artists/biologists/programmers care, but that is a tiny percentage of the world (and I bet most of them skip as much of the underlying calculus as they can!).
The majority of my students will not ever understand what a gauge boson is, and who can say they understand electricity without knowing how it differs from a lepton?
Of course, I tell them about these things which are over their head. I let them know they are there, and I show them a way to learn that could result in deep, true understanding if they follow it.
Trying to teach electricity -alone- in 15 hours (which is about 12 teachable hours) is a stretch. For starters, what does the word 'electricity' mean? I've counted it used about 6 different ways in colloquial speech. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon for half the class to not know what an atom is. If they don't know why a metal disc resists moving through a magnetic field more than a similar disc of the same mass but with holes cut into it, all I've done is created a false sense of competency.
I've already addressed this point thoroughly, but I would like to point out that you do learn to add before you understand counting. I won't explain here, but I point you to the excellent book An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. That book is easily one of my favorite non-fiction works. It requires almost no "math" to read, but a good level of mental sophistication". The issue at hand is handled by page 20 or so. (fun fact, he rebuilds calculus in about one page half way through the book!)
My job is to expand children's horizons. I teach them interesting things that spark a desire to learn. That's my actual job. I do not have to, nor should I, try to be their primary educator.
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KeeganKraven, that is not how adults speak. Yes, I am too wordy, but regardless you constructed your post in a particularly poor way. If you believe that I would be a poor teacher and that I need to be informed of this so that I do not ruin people's enjoyment of something you value, then you need to write to try to achieve that goal.
Opening with an indirect insult (like "not the man for the job") is not effective. It puts the reader on the defensive. Similarly, notice how my condescension in the above paragraph (implying you are still a child) came off as insulting and made you less likely to listen to what followed. Don't do that unless you want an argument instead of a discussion. If you DO want an argument, I direct you to the comments on YouTube the major news outlets, and 4chan.
If you are speaking to someone who is using proper grammar in a largely formal tone, then you need make sure that your word choice reflects that. For example, saying that you are not "harshing" me might be acceptable in common speech, but it is not part of Standard American English. Failure to speak in an mature voice in your writing does not invalidate your points per se, but it will prevent most people (me) from considering them.
When writing, you never need to state that something is your opinion. We know that because you wrote it. Your conclusion similarly does not need a statement calling it out. This is not English class: there is no ill-conceived word limit. Say what you mean, and be done with it (I could really do well to follow my own advice).
However, you can not *just* state what you think. Why would I care? Why should I care? I need to know why you think that. I can infer that you think that I would be too rigorous. While that is a reasonable concern, it is something that needs to be relayed better and put in context. Which step that I outlined was too rigorous? Is that level of rigor inappropriate in an informal educational setting, or is it inappropriate in a game (which is irrelevant)?
Considering the fairly evident fact that I am going through with this plan regardless of your approval, what advice can you offer me? Simply stating your disapproval is a worthless, throw away comment that does no one any good. Instead, try to give me something of substance. Develop your idea a little more, then figure out how to relay it. Remember, effective writing sandwiches what the reader doesn't want to hear between what they do.
Your thesis seems to be that I should teach logic and arithmetic with the tools designed to do such. Would you really want to take an introductory class during summer break that primarily used Logisim to teach? No, and neither would anyone else. The material is dry as hell, and presenting it like that upends the entire premise and subverts the objective.
If you honestly think turning someone off to even the best of video games is an unforgivable sin, I feel sorry for you. The real world is going to take that naivety and punish you for it.
If you do not follow these rules, there will always be a divide, regardless of your age. Mature people will always treat you like a child, and their tone will vary from frustrated to condescending to pedagogical to polite disregard. People do not like any of those things, they want to treated and seen as a peer. I know this because I lived it, so please take my overly-critical advice and do the hard, little things. Then, you will see my voice and tone change from someone who responds like he is grading an embarrassing paper, to someone who really wants to know how you can help me improve what I do.
If you can offer me any proper advice, I earnestly would like to hear it.
"I apologize for the length of this letter, but I didn't have time to make it shorter." -- Pascal
I can see that you are getting defensive in regards to what i have written. my intent was never to offend you but to try to prevent that same "false sense of competency" that you yourself have expressed concern about. i never said i thought you should throw your idea out the window just that you take the time to explain how one set of rules(redstone) differs from another set of rules (electricity). i would personally find it acceptable if you at least made it clear that electricity differs in many ways from redstone... Without that clarification i personally feel that a lot of these kids wont make that distinction. if you at least make that clarification they will at least know that what they are learning is different from real life circuitry while still learning the logic skills that they can apply in real life. i am sorry that i came off as rude but i did feel that i was being dismissed and i wanted to make my point heard but i should have done so more politely
Don't worry about it; I wasn't clear. One of the major things I do is I constantly show them examples where "this simple, seemingly useless thing you just learned is what powers this part of this complex, amazing thing". I tried to relay that earlier, but didn't do a good job.
I may highlight "redstone signals travels like ..., which is unlike the flow of electrical charge that flows like ..." but I am not trying to teach electricity.
I won't be misrepresenting anything, merely trying to get them to tinker with this set of tools (Minecraft) so that when they later go and try to learn something in a more conservative, formal setting they have a useful conceptual framework to extend from. As a child I had a kit from Radioshack called "300 in 1 electronics" that contained a bunch of "do this to make this happen" stuff, with no actual explination. I didn't learn how the circuits worked, but I certainly got comfortable working with them. When I went to college, my lab instructor asked "who here has used a multimeter? Oscilloscope? Variable power supply?" etc. Because of my experience with the electronics kit (that taught me nothing!), and other experiences like it, I was the only person who had my hand raised the entire time.
It was my fault for letting myself become frustrated. I almost want to delete my above post before it offends other people, but I think deleting the record of what you say is cowardly. Instead I am going to just try this:
I'm not upset with anyone, and apologize for being rude. I particularly apologize to KeeganKraven: I hope he understands that my critical response was misguided, not ill-intended. I wish the topic of discussion about how to best seize this opportunity.
I got a thumbs up from my boss: I can offer a pilot class in the spring. What I would like to do is open the class into a community resource, perhaps a wiki about how to teach (others/yourself) logic with Minecraft. I know there is a lot of independent material out there, perhaps it is time we tie it together? In two years I'll be presenting at a national education conference and would love to be able to say "this is how I helped schools and students the world over use Minecraft to learn the fundamentals of logic and programming".
Wow CPSQ, you're a very wise educator from what I can tell. Can you tell me the name of the museum you work at? Odds are good that I'll never actually see it, but who knows(it might have a website at least).
Considering how simple redstone can be to learn, and how well versed you are, it should be a problem. The only things to consider are making sure no one gets too distracted, and the technical details of organizing it. I would suggest getting a mod like macro keys (it's in my signature, because it's awesome) so that you can script commands designed to teleport everyone to their "work stations", as well as to places where they can mess around.
Further, be careful with tekkit; it could over-complicate some things and is known to be buggy every now and then. And, a bit more "political": Tekkit is, presumably, committing all kinds of infringement. For all its pluses, Tekkit is despised by mod makers, and some have contemplated legal action. I don't think anything will ever come of it, but keep it in mind.
Finally, I learned how redstone works first by watching a Youtube video like the one below, then experimenting through the redstone circuit page on minecraft wiki (the diagrams really helped). For your purposes, I suggest tying everything together into a customized guide of your own. It shouldn't be too hard to do so, and you could include links to other resources.
You'll notice this is a forum, particularly it is a forum about video games. Informal speech is the norm here, and I had already learned you were either too full of yourself, stubborn, clueless, etc. to give a damn whether I made the most eloquent argument or flamed you. Why waste my time like you waste yours.
I'm currently in my first year in electronics, and I have to say, the knowledge I learned in Minecraft with redstone gates and such really helps me at school. (I got an A in a test thanks to redstone! :3)
And I would recommend the Redpower 2 mod as it adds a LOT of redstone components (it's in Tekkit)
Wow CPSQ, you're a very wise educator from what I can tell. Can you tell me the name of the museum you work at? Odds are good that I'll never actually see it, but who knows(it might have a website at least).
I wish that was the case. I just try to do a little better than my teachers did for me. That, and I try to not throw away Wittgenstein's ladder, but remember it so I can use it to help others through the path. That is admirable, I know, but this is not false-modesty. I mess up at least as often as I just do my job.
I prefer to represent just myself on this board. That is hard enough without having to worry about making sure I represent my organization properly!
I saw a post of yours in another thread and found the macro addon through it: it sounds like a necessity.
I did not realize that Tekkit did not have the blessings of the powers-that-be. That certainly makes "official" use more difficult, but I would like to use it if I can get away with it.
I do /not/ plan to use Tekkit's mods to their full potential (you can build "nuclear" reactors?), but simply use it as an easy way to get the students involved. Cruddy coding making mod installation a stumbling block that prevents open-ended, independent experimentation... that is not acceptable, in my eyes.
I appreciate the link. The first video showed what it needed to show without wasting my time. That is a promising sign!
You'll notice this is a forum, particularly it is a forum about video games. Informal speech is the norm here, and I had already learned you were either too full of yourself, stubborn, clueless, etc. to give a damn whether I made the most eloquent argument or flamed you. Why waste my time like you waste yours.
When it comes to efficacy, my response apparently failed. I thought for a while how I was going to respond to your first post, because it was dismissive and a bit insulting. A knee-jerk response would have been to flame back, or simply ignore you. But I am not upset by you, and ignoring you seemed like a waste. I decided that I would instead try to get you to realize not just why but HOW that was a bad idea. I illustrated this point by using those same bad concepts in my response, and then calling them out as ineffective. It wasn't the most respectful approach, but I've used it before to good effect on older High School students (themselves having no end to their disrespect). They took the olive branch at the end, but I see it didn't work here.
For example, you continue to posit things that aren't true. Oh, you could definitely call me full of myself, you have plenty of evidence of that. I keep using semi-obscure technical references to prove my point, don't I? But calling me clueless and stubborn? I asked for you to give a meaningful contribution to the topic, and calling me "clueless" is honestly baffling. I've made it my life's work to gain and spread as much understanding as I can.
Also you misinterpreted the point of my response. My issue is not with your grammar. I talk amicably with countless people online who have poor grammar. Very many of them speak much worse than you. The tone and voice of the writing, however, is where the difference is. I used a critique of your grammar to highlight the problems with your voice, by adopting that voice and addressing it as something that prevents you from being a peer (something that people in your age range (or mine) strive for). I am sorry that it didn't work.
My time is not wasted, it is spent towards specific goals. These goals are usually terribly, terribly difficult. That technical knowledge I've put on display came to me as a consequence of trying to do things that are far beyond my ken. Because of this I experience a lot of failure.
Failure like what I had with a recent pico-project to try to uplift a wayward forum poster, whom I would usually dismiss as a troll. But then I saw that your post was too well structured to be a modern troll (gone is the elegant, crafty trolling of yesteryear), and discerned you must have actually been trying to talk to me. I clicked on your profile, to see your previous posts and saw your listed age. Now, I hate age discrimination, and have actually been a member of a youth's rights organization since I was younger than you, but it did make me remember who I was at that age. I am not too much older now, and already I wish someone had been effective at explaining not that I was a terribly immature person, but instead how I could change that.
Please, accept my apology. I approached it in a really stupid way, that did not work. I'm sorry. Trying to change someone's mind about even simple things is difficult, and presuming to try to change their approach to human interaction was outright foolish. I earnestly *do* want to know what you think I can do to improve my class, and have a respectful discussion based around that.
This idea definetly sounds good. Why not learn while having fun?
Build an adder and destroy it with TNT? Make chain reactions? Get a close-up to all these gates that today are so small you can barely notice them?
Also, don't forget that some kids may be searching google and watch stuff for minecraft redstone themselves. It won't take too long until they discover sethbling/disco/cnb etc...
Next point:
Minecraft is also a competitive environment. Get your pupils to design circuits on their own and compete against each other in compactness,speed, usability etc...
Thumbs up from me.
Hope this spreads out in the world. In germany, our teacher's would never ever do smth like that
PS:
If this thread is starting to get into a flame war, i'll be locking this immediately.
EDIT:
Computercraft will later on also give you the possibility to get them programming and connecting this program to actual binary logic.
Im glad that there are no hard feelings. and to be fair... my own experiences with educators in my lifetime involves a lot spereading misinformatoin and failure to explain critical differences... Because of these experiences this has become a pet peeve of mine and im sorry that i let that colour my first impression
Im glad that there are no hard feelings. and to be fair... my own experiences with educators in my lifetime involves a lot spereading misinformatoin and failure to explain critical differences... Because of these experiences this has become a pet peeve of mine and im sorry that i let that colour my first impression
Bad experiences are why I chose this path instead of, ya know, academia or making money as an engineer.
For example, when I was first told that planes fly because air travels faster over the top than the bottom I was incredulous and asked a lot of questions... I realized that it didn't make sense. I was young, and she convinced me. Years later I was at an enrichment class at an aviation museum and looked like a fool for trying to defend what I was taught.
I was taught electricity so comically poorly, too. They told me that the electrons carried "electricity" and deposited it in the light bulb before returning to the battery, where they picked up more "electricity". We were made to envision this by carrying cups of water around the room, dumping them into one bucket and picking it up from another.
Bad experiences are why I chose this path instead of, ya know, academia or making money as an engineer.
For example, when I was first told that planes fly because air travels faster over the top than the bottom I was incredulous and asked a lot of questions... I realized that it didn't make sense. I was young, and she convinced me. Years later I was at an enrichment class at an aviation museum and looked like a fool for trying to defend what I was taught.
I was taught electricity so comically poorly, too. They told me that the electrons carried "electricity" and deposited it in the light bulb before returning to the battery, where they picked up more "electricity". We were made to envision this by carrying cups of water around the room, dumping them into one bucket and picking it up from another.
that is actually reassuring... it is nice to know that there are some educators out there that understand how detrimental misinformation actually can be. while it may seem like a very small inconsequential misunderstanding... these very "minor" pieces of information can form the basis of someone's understanding of a lot more.
I am flabbergasted! An educator who is actually interested in *gasp* educating his (or is it her?) students! (As opposed to just wanting to rattle off the facts and hope that will do).
Yes, my experiences with "education" have not been very good, with only a few exceptions. For example, I never learned algebra simply because nobody ever bothered to explain its purpose to me (that it was to teach you how to manipulate numbers regardless of what the numbers are). I can remember being terribly confused over x, y and z appearing where numbers should be and quickly gave up when nobody seemed able to explain it to me.
I doff my hat (or helm - see my icon) ;-) to you, sir. And I wish you the best in your efforts to educate the young.
Are you kidding me? Redstone is the ONLY reason that I still play minecraft. I know not everyone feels the same, but I enjoy a strong sense of accomplishment when I can make all kinds of mechanisms using genuine, real-world principals. It's a ton of fun, and I think the kids will love it!
Classic mode only allows for building objects - but they don't do anything! They just sit there and look cool. But redstone is different. It MOVES and has all kinds of possibilities. If anything, the class will draw kids into minecraft. That said, it also makes logic much less intimidating, which will get kids interested in that as well. So it's a win-win.
^It always escalates quickly. Always.
Maybe if you focused on just logic gates it would be fine, since the logic gate theory is going to be fairly close to real life. But as far as how redstone circuits are setup, it may actually be detrimental to any aspiring engineers. There's no voltage and no current; it throws real circuit theory out the window.
I also built some Langoliers. My pretty turtles are destroying the landscape with terrifying efficiency, though they are not yet self replicating (this is just a matter of time; they are crafting some things). I've yet to figure out an efficient method for mining diamonds (yes, I know where they spawn), but I will still have to wait for a Tekkit update before I can properly build what I imagine.
Tekkit, most importantly, decreases the barrier of entry. There is no lengthy, confusing mod installation process rife with pitfalls. The students can install Tekkit, and start playing. Great! This makes my ultimate goal of independent experimentation all the easier.
I think a RSS is a good resource. We might use it for ~5 minutes. I think that it decreases the appeal of the whole thing. At that point, why not just have them use Logisim? (because no one wants to take a Logisim class)
http://en.wikipedia....Lie-to-children
Did you ever notice that you learned your colors before you knew that the human visual system has 4 types of photosensitive receptors, whose chemical signals undergo a distributed lossy compression that approximates the Difference of Gaussians algorithm? Frankly, that's because knowing your colors is more important. The majority of people do not deal with vision on such a level and do not care about things like perceptually uniform color spaces. Yeah, plenty of artists/biologists/programmers care, but that is a tiny percentage of the world (and I bet most of them skip as much of the underlying calculus as they can!).
The majority of my students will not ever understand what a gauge boson is, and who can say they understand electricity without knowing how it differs from a lepton?
Of course, I tell them about these things which are over their head. I let them know they are there, and I show them a way to learn that could result in deep, true understanding if they follow it.
Trying to teach electricity -alone- in 15 hours (which is about 12 teachable hours) is a stretch. For starters, what does the word 'electricity' mean? I've counted it used about 6 different ways in colloquial speech. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon for half the class to not know what an atom is. If they don't know why a metal disc resists moving through a magnetic field more than a similar disc of the same mass but with holes cut into it, all I've done is created a false sense of competency.
I've already addressed this point thoroughly, but I would like to point out that you do learn to add before you understand counting. I won't explain here, but I point you to the excellent book An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. That book is easily one of my favorite non-fiction works. It requires almost no "math" to read, but a good level of mental sophistication". The issue at hand is handled by page 20 or so. (fun fact, he rebuilds calculus in about one page half way through the book!)
My job is to expand children's horizons. I teach them interesting things that spark a desire to learn. That's my actual job. I do not have to, nor should I, try to be their primary educator.
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KeeganKraven, that is not how adults speak. Yes, I am too wordy, but regardless you constructed your post in a particularly poor way. If you believe that I would be a poor teacher and that I need to be informed of this so that I do not ruin people's enjoyment of something you value, then you need to write to try to achieve that goal.
Opening with an indirect insult (like "not the man for the job") is not effective. It puts the reader on the defensive. Similarly, notice how my condescension in the above paragraph (implying you are still a child) came off as insulting and made you less likely to listen to what followed. Don't do that unless you want an argument instead of a discussion. If you DO want an argument, I direct you to the comments on YouTube the major news outlets, and 4chan.
If you are speaking to someone who is using proper grammar in a largely formal tone, then you need make sure that your word choice reflects that. For example, saying that you are not "harshing" me might be acceptable in common speech, but it is not part of Standard American English. Failure to speak in an mature voice in your writing does not invalidate your points per se, but it will prevent most people (me) from considering them.
When writing, you never need to state that something is your opinion. We know that because you wrote it. Your conclusion similarly does not need a statement calling it out. This is not English class: there is no ill-conceived word limit. Say what you mean, and be done with it (I could really do well to follow my own advice).
However, you can not *just* state what you think. Why would I care? Why should I care? I need to know why you think that. I can infer that you think that I would be too rigorous. While that is a reasonable concern, it is something that needs to be relayed better and put in context. Which step that I outlined was too rigorous? Is that level of rigor inappropriate in an informal educational setting, or is it inappropriate in a game (which is irrelevant)?
Considering the fairly evident fact that I am going through with this plan regardless of your approval, what advice can you offer me? Simply stating your disapproval is a worthless, throw away comment that does no one any good. Instead, try to give me something of substance. Develop your idea a little more, then figure out how to relay it. Remember, effective writing sandwiches what the reader doesn't want to hear between what they do.
Your thesis seems to be that I should teach logic and arithmetic with the tools designed to do such. Would you really want to take an introductory class during summer break that primarily used Logisim to teach? No, and neither would anyone else. The material is dry as hell, and presenting it like that upends the entire premise and subverts the objective.
If you honestly think turning someone off to even the best of video games is an unforgivable sin, I feel sorry for you. The real world is going to take that naivety and punish you for it.
If you do not follow these rules, there will always be a divide, regardless of your age. Mature people will always treat you like a child, and their tone will vary from frustrated to condescending to pedagogical to polite disregard. People do not like any of those things, they want to treated and seen as a peer. I know this because I lived it, so please take my overly-critical advice and do the hard, little things. Then, you will see my voice and tone change from someone who responds like he is grading an embarrassing paper, to someone who really wants to know how you can help me improve what I do.
If you can offer me any proper advice, I earnestly would like to hear it.
"I apologize for the length of this letter, but I didn't have time to make it shorter." -- Pascal
I may highlight "redstone signals travels like ..., which is unlike the flow of electrical charge that flows like ..." but I am not trying to teach electricity.
I won't be misrepresenting anything, merely trying to get them to tinker with this set of tools (Minecraft) so that when they later go and try to learn something in a more conservative, formal setting they have a useful conceptual framework to extend from. As a child I had a kit from Radioshack called "300 in 1 electronics" that contained a bunch of "do this to make this happen" stuff, with no actual explination. I didn't learn how the circuits worked, but I certainly got comfortable working with them. When I went to college, my lab instructor asked "who here has used a multimeter? Oscilloscope? Variable power supply?" etc. Because of my experience with the electronics kit (that taught me nothing!), and other experiences like it, I was the only person who had my hand raised the entire time.
It was my fault for letting myself become frustrated. I almost want to delete my above post before it offends other people, but I think deleting the record of what you say is cowardly. Instead I am going to just try this:
I'm not upset with anyone, and apologize for being rude. I particularly apologize to KeeganKraven: I hope he understands that my critical response was misguided, not ill-intended. I wish the topic of discussion about how to best seize this opportunity.
I got a thumbs up from my boss: I can offer a pilot class in the spring. What I would like to do is open the class into a community resource, perhaps a wiki about how to teach (others/yourself) logic with Minecraft. I know there is a lot of independent material out there, perhaps it is time we tie it together? In two years I'll be presenting at a national education conference and would love to be able to say "this is how I helped schools and students the world over use Minecraft to learn the fundamentals of logic and programming".
Considering how simple redstone can be to learn, and how well versed you are, it should be a problem. The only things to consider are making sure no one gets too distracted, and the technical details of organizing it. I would suggest getting a mod like macro keys (it's in my signature, because it's awesome) so that you can script commands designed to teleport everyone to their "work stations", as well as to places where they can mess around.
Further, be careful with tekkit; it could over-complicate some things and is known to be buggy every now and then. And, a bit more "political": Tekkit is, presumably, committing all kinds of infringement. For all its pluses, Tekkit is despised by mod makers, and some have contemplated legal action. I don't think anything will ever come of it, but keep it in mind.
Finally, I learned how redstone works first by watching a Youtube video like the one below, then experimenting through the redstone circuit page on minecraft wiki (the diagrams really helped). For your purposes, I suggest tying everything together into a customized guide of your own. It shouldn't be too hard to do so, and you could include links to other resources.
Good luck!
And I would recommend the Redpower 2 mod as it adds a LOT of redstone components (it's in Tekkit)
I wish that was the case. I just try to do a little better than my teachers did for me. That, and I try to not throw away Wittgenstein's ladder, but remember it so I can use it to help others through the path. That is admirable, I know, but this is not false-modesty. I mess up at least as often as I just do my job.
I prefer to represent just myself on this board. That is hard enough without having to worry about making sure I represent my organization properly!
I saw a post of yours in another thread and found the macro addon through it: it sounds like a necessity.
I did not realize that Tekkit did not have the blessings of the powers-that-be. That certainly makes "official" use more difficult, but I would like to use it if I can get away with it.
I do /not/ plan to use Tekkit's mods to their full potential (you can build "nuclear" reactors?), but simply use it as an easy way to get the students involved. Cruddy coding making mod installation a stumbling block that prevents open-ended, independent experimentation... that is not acceptable, in my eyes.
I appreciate the link. The first video showed what it needed to show without wasting my time. That is a promising sign!
When it comes to efficacy, my response apparently failed. I thought for a while how I was going to respond to your first post, because it was dismissive and a bit insulting. A knee-jerk response would have been to flame back, or simply ignore you. But I am not upset by you, and ignoring you seemed like a waste. I decided that I would instead try to get you to realize not just why but HOW that was a bad idea. I illustrated this point by using those same bad concepts in my response, and then calling them out as ineffective. It wasn't the most respectful approach, but I've used it before to good effect on older High School students (themselves having no end to their disrespect). They took the olive branch at the end, but I see it didn't work here.
For example, you continue to posit things that aren't true. Oh, you could definitely call me full of myself, you have plenty of evidence of that. I keep using semi-obscure technical references to prove my point, don't I? But calling me clueless and stubborn? I asked for you to give a meaningful contribution to the topic, and calling me "clueless" is honestly baffling. I've made it my life's work to gain and spread as much understanding as I can.
Also you misinterpreted the point of my response. My issue is not with your grammar. I talk amicably with countless people online who have poor grammar. Very many of them speak much worse than you. The tone and voice of the writing, however, is where the difference is. I used a critique of your grammar to highlight the problems with your voice, by adopting that voice and addressing it as something that prevents you from being a peer (something that people in your age range (or mine) strive for). I am sorry that it didn't work.
My time is not wasted, it is spent towards specific goals. These goals are usually terribly, terribly difficult. That technical knowledge I've put on display came to me as a consequence of trying to do things that are far beyond my ken. Because of this I experience a lot of failure.
Failure like what I had with a recent pico-project to try to uplift a wayward forum poster, whom I would usually dismiss as a troll. But then I saw that your post was too well structured to be a modern troll (gone is the elegant, crafty trolling of yesteryear), and discerned you must have actually been trying to talk to me. I clicked on your profile, to see your previous posts and saw your listed age. Now, I hate age discrimination, and have actually been a member of a youth's rights organization since I was younger than you, but it did make me remember who I was at that age. I am not too much older now, and already I wish someone had been effective at explaining not that I was a terribly immature person, but instead how I could change that.
Please, accept my apology. I approached it in a really stupid way, that did not work. I'm sorry. Trying to change someone's mind about even simple things is difficult, and presuming to try to change their approach to human interaction was outright foolish. I earnestly *do* want to know what you think I can do to improve my class, and have a respectful discussion based around that.
Build an adder and destroy it with TNT? Make chain reactions? Get a close-up to all these gates that today are so small you can barely notice them?
Also, don't forget that some kids may be searching google and watch stuff for minecraft redstone themselves. It won't take too long until they discover sethbling/disco/cnb etc...
Next point:
Minecraft is also a competitive environment. Get your pupils to design circuits on their own and compete against each other in compactness,speed, usability etc...
Thumbs up from me.
Hope this spreads out in the world. In germany, our teacher's would never ever do smth like that
PS:
If this thread is starting to get into a flame war, i'll be locking this immediately.
EDIT:
Computercraft will later on also give you the possibility to get them programming and connecting this program to actual binary logic.
Well... i guess thank you then, sir?
Should i know you?(Probably i forgot, sorry then xD)
Don't worry about it, and thank you. I didn't react well either.
Bad experiences are why I chose this path instead of, ya know, academia or making money as an engineer.
For example, when I was first told that planes fly because air travels faster over the top than the bottom I was incredulous and asked a lot of questions... I realized that it didn't make sense. I was young, and she convinced me. Years later I was at an enrichment class at an aviation museum and looked like a fool for trying to defend what I was taught.
I was taught electricity so comically poorly, too. They told me that the electrons carried "electricity" and deposited it in the light bulb before returning to the battery, where they picked up more "electricity". We were made to envision this by carrying cups of water around the room, dumping them into one bucket and picking it up from another.
that is actually reassuring... it is nice to know that there are some educators out there that understand how detrimental misinformation actually can be. while it may seem like a very small inconsequential misunderstanding... these very "minor" pieces of information can form the basis of someone's understanding of a lot more.
Yes, my experiences with "education" have not been very good, with only a few exceptions. For example, I never learned algebra simply because nobody ever bothered to explain its purpose to me (that it was to teach you how to manipulate numbers regardless of what the numbers are). I can remember being terribly confused over x, y and z appearing where numbers should be and quickly gave up when nobody seemed able to explain it to me.
I doff my hat (or helm - see my icon) ;-) to you, sir. And I wish you the best in your efforts to educate the young.