风靡全球的MinecraftEdu做到了
如今，全球六大洲超过2,100多所学校的不同年级都在使用MinecraftEdu——从幼儿园到高中，甚至还包括一些大学。从历史到美术再到科学，几乎所有的科目教学中都可以见到这一游戏的身影。
If you have or know any kids between the ages of 9 and 15, odds are you’re aware of Minecraft. The PC game from independent Swedish developer Mojang has attracted more than 75 million registered users since launching in December 2010, according to video game analyst firm Newzoo.
如果你的孩子或你认识的孩子在9岁-15岁之间，那么你很有可能听说过Minecraft。视频游戏分析公司Newzoo称，自2010年12月面世以来，这款由瑞典独立游戏开发商Mojang公司开发的桌面电脑游戏已斩获了7,500多万名注册用户。
And that number doesn’t include the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and mobile versions of the game that have expanded the audience while generating approximately $1 billion for creator Markus “Notch” Persson and his company.
而且这一数字还不包括Xbox 360、Xbox One、PlayStation 3、PlayStation 4和移动版本的游戏玩家。这些平台不仅进一步拓展了该游戏的受众群体，同时也为游戏创作人马库斯?佩尔松及其公司带来了约10亿美元的收入。
“Minecraft is often referred to as ‘what LEGO should have done online,’” said Peter Warman, video game analyst at research firm Newzoo. “Now Minecraft has become a LEGO set itself, drawing so much time from kids and youngsters that it is seriously competing with the physical LEGO bricks. And it’s not just kids and young teens that play the game. Of the millions of Minecraft Pocket Edition players, 60% is older than 20 and one-third is female.”
Newzoo研究公司视频游戏分析师皮特?沃曼表示，“Minecraft通常被称为‘本应由乐高积木公司（LEGO）开发的在线游戏’。如今，Minecraft自身已经成为了一种套装版的乐高积木，有太多太多的小孩和青少年沉溺于此，而这也让该游戏成为了实体乐高积木真正的竞争对手。此外，玩游戏的不止是孩子和青少年。在数百万的Minecraft口袋版玩家中，60%的年龄都在20岁以上，有三分之一是女性玩家。”
“The game’s success can be attributed to the freedom of expression and the ability to build anything you can imagine,” said Carl Manneh, CEO of Mojang. “It gives people a way to visualize anything they can imagine. When you have a creative software like that, people tend to want to share it with friends. That’s really helped us in spreading the word about the game.”
Mojang公司首席执行官卡尔?马内表示，“这款游戏成功的原因在于，玩家可以在游戏中自由发挥，搭建任何想要搭建的物体。它可以让人们将任何想象的事物视觉化。当人们拥有这样一款充满创意的软件时，他们往往打算跟朋友分享。这种口口相传对这款游戏的推动起到了莫大的帮助。”
When New York City teacher Joel Levin saw this explosion of popularity among his students, he decided to blog about the game. After all, kids weren’t just playing this game across multiple platforms, they were also spending countless hours perusing the 50 million-plus Minecraft videos on YouTube.
当纽约市教师乔?莱文亲眼目睹这款游戏在学生当中的火爆程度之后，他决定为游戏撰写博文。毕竟，孩子们不仅仅是在各个平台玩这款游戏，他们还会花大量时间去观摩YouTube上5,000多万个Minecraft视频。
The educator had spent the past decade trying to incorporate video games into his classroom curriculum as a way to engage students and make learning more relevant to today’s generation. Levin said he was blown away at the range of possibilities that Minecraft offered, from building challenges, to having kids do research online and report back on what they learned, to exploring digital citizenship by building communities in the game that serves as virtual microcosms to high school.
在过去的10年中，这位教师一直尝试着把这款视频游戏融入课堂教学之中，以吸引学生的注意力，并让教学紧跟当前一代的需求。莱文说，Minecraft游戏所提供的无限可能性让他震惊不已，除了搭建方面的挑战之外，它能够让孩子们进行在线研究，然后汇报自己都学到了哪些东西，还可以通过在游戏中构建与高中相对应的虚拟微观社区来探索数字公民身份。
“Teachers from all over the world started contacting me,” said Levin. Eventually, Levin was put in touch with Mojang. “I was able to open a dialogue with teachers and programmers in Finland, which is at the forefront of the world in education.” Levin partnered with SanteriKoivisto, a teacher in Finland, to formalize a company, TeacherGaming.
莱文说，“全球各地的教师都开始与我联系”。最终，莱文与Mojang公司取得了联系。“我与芬兰的老师和程序员建立了对话机制，而芬兰在教育方面一直走在世界最前沿。”莱文与芬兰的教师科伊维斯托合作成立了一家名为“教师游戏(TeacherGaming)”的公司。
“The first thing we did was secure rights to sell Minecraft to schools at half price. Mojang loves the idea of getting its game into schools,” Levin said. “We also created a custom version of MinecraftEdu, which features the original game plus layers of new tools that teachers and students can use for the classroom.”
莱文说，“我们所做的第一件事就是争取到了以半价向学校出售Minecraft的权利。Mojang非常赞赏让它的游戏走入校园这个想法。我们还开发了该游戏的校园定制版MinecraftEdu，其中不仅包含原版游戏，还新增了许多可供老师和学生在课堂应用的新工具。”
Today, more than 2,100 schools around the globe on six different continents are using MinecraftEdu at a variety of grade levels—from kindergarten to high school and even at some universities. The game is being used to teach almost every subject from history to art to science. Levin said this array of subjects and grade levels speaks to how open and flexible it is.
如今，全球六大洲超过2,100多所学校的不同年级都在使用MinecraftEdu——从幼儿园到高中，甚至还包括一些大学。从历史到美术再到科学，几乎所有的科目教学中都可以见到这一游戏的身影。莱文说，适用科目和年级的广泛性说明了该游戏强大的开放度和灵活性。
“We kept MinecraftEdu very open-ended to be a platform that teachers could create their own content on top of,” said Levin. “The secret sauce has been early-adopter teachers coming up with ingenious lessons and then sharing their lesson plans and curriculums with other teachers. Educators can find, discover and download this content and get them running in their own classrooms.”
莱文说，“我们将MinecraftEdu打造成一个高度开放的平台，这样一来，教师们就可以在其中创建自己的内容。该软件的秘密武器在于，早期使用该软件的教师会开发独具匠心的课程，然后将其教学计划和课程与其他老师分享。老师们可以寻找、发现和下载这一内容，并在自己的课堂上使用。”
In the U.S., history teachers are recreating ancient worlds in the game and then having students go on virtual adventures, talking to historical characters, or having students create historical landmarks based on what they learned in class. In Australia, a science teacher created giant 3D models of cells and neurotransmitters and let the class explore them. Other teachers have used the simulation aspect of the game, having kids do experiments with MinecraftEdu gravity and then comparing that to the real world and coming up with a hypothesis and proving it.
在美国，历史教师正利用游戏重建古代世界，然后让学生们开始其虚拟征程，与历史人物对话，或让学生根据课堂所学重建地标性历史建筑。在澳大利亚，科学老师创建了一个巨大的细胞和神经递质三维模型，并让学生们对其进行探索。其他老师则发挥了该游戏的模拟功能，让孩子们利用MinecraftEdu做重力实验，然后与真实世界的结果进行对比，从而提出假设并进行证明。
In Denmark, ESL teacher André Chercka used MinecraftEdu to help educate troubled teens. Kids can play the game in the classroom, but they have to speak only English. Because the game is so engaging, teachers find students pushing themselves and learning English.
在丹麦，非母语英语课程教师安德鲁?查卡使用MinecraftEdu帮助教育问题少年。孩子们可以在课堂玩游戏，但前提是只能说英语。在该游戏的强烈吸引下，教师们发现学生们一个个都在努力地学习英语。
“Book learning can only go so far,” said Levin. “You need to communicate to another person to solve problems and ultimately to succeed.”
莱文说，“从书本上学到的东西总是有限的。要想解决问题并最终获得成功，人们得与其他人进行交流。”
Even at younger grade levels, the game has been successfully integrated into education. In kindergarten classrooms, the game is used for play like LEGOs. Around the second-grade level, instructors are using the game to teach children about how communities work and the different roles in society. The game is good at modeling things like asking a group of kids to build a town and assigning different tasks like chopping wood and making tools. That concept was taken to another level at one high school, where a government teacher let kids form their own society. They wrote a town charter and had a great debate about how to govern and how to divide labor.
即便是在较低的年级，这款游戏也已经被成功地整合到教学当中。在幼儿园教室里，孩子们像玩乐高积木一样玩这款游戏。在二年级，指导员利用游戏向孩子们介绍社区的运作方式，以及人们在社会上扮演的不同角色。将事物模块化是该游戏的专长，例如让一组孩子建设一座城镇，然后分配不同任务，例如锯木头和制作工具。这一理念在一所高中得到了进一步升华，一位公立学校教师让孩子们根据自己的想法来组建社会。他们撰写了城镇章程，而且就城镇管理方式和劳动分配方式进行了非常有意义的辩论。
“At the meta level if you have some programming skills you can change the game to add whatever you want to it,” said Levin, who noted that the game is also being used to teach programming at some schools. “I’ve seen videos from a calculus class where students were making shapes using MinecraftEdu blocks that conformed to the formulas they were studying. Other students built the Globe Theater and then stood on stage reciting Shakespeare.”
莱文注意到一些学校在编程教学中也在使用该游戏，他说：“如果你拥有一些元级层次的编程技术，你可以对游戏进行更改，并按照自己的想法增加任何组件。在我看过的一段微积分课程视频中，学生们使用MinecraftEdu方块按照所学公式来拼凑各种形状。其他的学生则搭建了环球剧场（Globe Theater），然后站在台上朗诵莎士比亚的作品。”
MinecraftEdu is helping debunk the stigma attached to video games—generally that they’re a waste of time or lead to addictive or negative behavior. Levin said there’s enough research out there that disproves this idea, including a recent study in the United Kingdom that tracked 13,000 kids over 10 years and was unable to show any negative effects from kids who played games when compared to those who did not.
MinecraftEdu正在为视频游戏平反——人们过去普遍认为，玩视频游戏是浪费时间，而且容易上瘾或导致不良行为。莱文说，有足够多的研究表明，这一观点并不正确，其中包括英国近期对1.3万名儿童开展的长达10年的跟踪调查。该调查显示，与不玩游戏的孩子相比，玩游戏的孩子并未因为玩游戏而受到任何不良影响。
“It’s about whether the school is willing to embrace new teaching methods and education in the classroom,” said Levin. “By and large, schools all over the world schools are really looking for teaching methods they can apply to 21st-century learning.”
莱文说：“关键问题在于，学校是否愿意在课堂上使用新的教学方法和教育模式。总的来说，全世界的学校都在认真地寻找适用于21世纪教育的教学方法。”
The cost of entry for educators is low at $391, which includes the software plus 25 licenses of the game. MinecraftEdu is only available for the PC, Mac and Linux, which fits in nicely with the classroom setting.
对于教学人员来说，使用这款软件的成本低至391美元，其中包括软件及25项授权。MinecraftEdu仅适用于桌面电脑、苹果Mac电脑和Linux系统，而且可以很好地融入课堂环境中。 |
