A presentation about minecraftu.org, an online and in real life coding instruction program for 6-14 year olds, based in Dallas, TX

1. Today’s Gamers
Tomorrow’s Developers

3. Qualities of a good software
developer
• Inquisitive
• Enjoys solving a problem
• Knows how to research solutions
• Is passionate about esoteric topics
• Motivated by experiences of flow state
• Works well with others

4. Qualities of a good gamer
• Inquisitive
• Enjoys solving a problem
• Knows how to research solutions
• Is passionate about esoteric topics
• Motivated by experiences of flow state
• Plays well with others

5. Minecraft game
mechanics are incredibly
analogous to engineering.
Everything is an object.

6. Minecraft U
Late 2013

7. We Curate a Collection
of the Best Tools in
Technology Education
We are technologists ourselves and as such
understand the importance of having the best tools.
Think of this as our “stack”.

8. Minecraft (obvs)
ComputerCraft
Lua
ProcessingJS
Java
Parent’s Guide
Whitelisted Servers
(and a little Ruby)

9. We Use Hand Crafted
Curriculum That We Call
Sequences
Our curriculum is designed to guide a child from the
basics of Minecraft gameplay all the way through to
programming using modern programming languages.
Our materials are engaging and skip the cruft of most
books or templated materials. Maintaining it
ourselves means we are able to keep it updated to the
changing landscape of both Minecraft and technology
education.
This is our software.

11. First Camps
Summer 2014
The Hockaday School

13. Their first “It works!”
moment

14. Workshops
Most weekends 2014-2015

15. Expanded Camps
Summer 2015
Iterating on current curriculum
Adding additional curriculum/camps

16. minecraftu.org SaaS
Spring 2015

18. You should play Minecraft
It’s fun
minecraftu.org