I like it -- easy-to-learn core mechanic, solid progression of skills, reasonable and simple "story" frame: this is good edugaming, imo. :)
As near as I can tell, this is a separate games-related unit/dept. at UW, separate from the Critical Gaming Project. Can anyone confirm? Regardless, I like to see so much ferment around games coming from one institution.
Brecht Vandenbroucke Minecraft is the hot new videogame among teachers and parents. It's considered genuinely educational: Like an infinite set of programmable Lego blocks, it's a way to instill spatial reasoning, math, and logic-the skills beloved by science and technology educators. But from what I've seen, it also teaches something else: good old-fashioned reading and...