Instead of betting money on the Feb. 1 game, the two superheroes decided to wager charity visits dressed up as their Marvel superheroes. Even though Evans, who rooted for the New England Patriots, won the bet, he decided to drop by Pratt’s charity of choice, Seattle Children’s Hospital on Saturday.
The day was filled with smiles and laughter as Evans, who was dressed up as Captain America, handed out toys to the children who were being treated at the hospital.
But that doesn’t mean that Pratt didn’t keep up his end of their bet. The two visited Evan’s charity of choice, Christopher’s Haven, in Boston Feb. 5.
One thing is fore sure – when two superheroes make a bet, we all win.
Given the overwhelming amount of depressing/terrible things going on in the world right now, it’s easy to get bogged down in cynicism.
Then a story like this comes up that reminds you that hey, there are some really, really good people out there doing really, really good things too.
Albert Manero is a Fulbright scholar and doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the University of Central Florida. He’s currently working on building and donating low-cost 3D-printed bionic limbs to kids around the world through his volunteer group Limbitless Solutions. Using 3D printing technology, Albert is able to provide those in need with bionic limbs for a fraction of what they would normally cost (an arm, for example, is $300 using this method versus about $40,000 made the traditional way).
Robert Downey Jr. got involved in Albert’s group and, when he learned about a 7-year-old boy named Alex who “loves superheroes and riding his bike,” and who was born with a partially developed right arm, Iron Man decided to pitch in himself.
In the video below (via CNET), you’ll see RDJ presenting Alex with his new arm in true Tony Stark fashion. Be warned: you may need some tissues at the ready before watching.
For more on Limbitless Solutions, please visit their website, and check out Microsoft’s The Collective Project as well, who helped to make Albert’s dream become a reality.
Read more: http://collider.com/robert-downey-jr-bionic-arm-boy-video/#ixzz3UJa9Czac
A spokesperson from Mojang responded to the possibility of Minecraft’s ban in Turkey over its alleged focus on “violence.”Speaking to GamesBeat, the Mojang representative explained the many different approaches to Minecraft by its fans, and the ways the game world’s dangers can be avoided or turned off entirely:
“Minecraft is enjoyed by many players in a wide variety of ways. Many enjoy the creative freedom that’s presented by Minecraft and its tools, some are more interested by the opportunity to explore a landscape without boundaries and to go on exciting adventures with friends. We encourage players to cooperate in order to succeed, whether they’re building, exploring, or adventuring.
“The world of Minecraft can be a dangerous place: it’s inhabited by scary, genderless monsters that come out at night. It might be necessary to defend against them to survive. If people find this level of fantasy conflict upsetting, we would encourage them to play in Creative Mode, or to enable the Peaceful setting. Both of these options will prevent monsters from appearing in the world.”
Turkey’s Ministry of Family and Social Policies are working on possibly banning Minecraft after its Children Services General Directorate investigated and found that while “the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children” via building and crafting, “mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed” in the process.
“In short, the game is based on violence,” concluded the organization.
We’ll keep you updated on the results of this investigation.
Meanwhile, Minecraft is doing well in Japan, selling over 500,000 units on the PlayStation family of consoles.
It’s official: Microsoft said Monday morning that it’s buying Mojang, maker of the popular “Minecraft” video game, for $2.5 billion.
The Mojang team will join Microsoft Studios, maker of games such as the “Halo” and “Forza” franchises, according to a Microsoft news release.
“Microsoft’s investments in cloud and mobile technologies will enable ‘Minecraft’ players to benefit from richer and faster worlds, more powerful development tools, and more opportunities to connect across the ‘Minecraft’ community,” the company said in the news release.
Microsoft said it expects the acquisition, which is expected to close in 2014, to be break even in fiscal year 2015.
“Minecraft” has had more than 100 million downloads on PCs alone since its launch in 2009. It is the most popular online game on Xbox and the top paid app on the iOS and Android platforms in the U.S., Microsoft said.
“The ‘Minecraft’ community is among the most active and passionate in the industry, with more than 2 billion hours played on Xbox 360 alone in the past two years,” the company said in the news release. ” ‘Minecraft’ fans are loyal, with nearly 90 percent of paid customers on the PC having signed in within the past 12 months.”
Phil Spencer, head of Xbox and Microsoft Studios, said in a blog post Monday morning: “We respect the brand and independent spirit that has made ‘Minecraft’ great, and we’ll carry on the tradition of innovation to move the franchise forward. …
” ‘Minecraft’ adds diversity to our game portfolio and helps us reach new gamers across multiple platforms. Gaming is the top activity across devices and we see great potential to continue to grow the ‘Minecraft’ community and nurture the franchise. That is why we plan to continue to make ‘Minecraft’ available across platforms – including iOS, Android and PlayStation, in addition to Xbox and PC.”
Mojang is a small, independent game developer studio based in Stockholm, Sweden. Last year, the company made a profit of $128 million on $360 million in revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported last week that Microsoft was considering the purchase.
“Change is scary, and this is a big change for all of us,” the Mojang team wrote in a blog post Monday morning, seeking to reassure the community of “Minecraft” players. “It’s going to be good though. Everything is going to be OK.”
Mojang agreed to be acquired, the game studio said in the blog post, because “Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance. Though we’re massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch’s intention for it to get this big.”
Markus Persson, known by gamers as “Notch,” is the creator of “Minecraft” and Mojang’s majority shareholder. According to the Mojang blog post, Notch decided:
“He doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning ‘Minecraft’ became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. …
“There are only a handful of potential buyers with the resources to grow ‘Minecraft’ on a scale that it deserves. We’ve worked closely with Microsoft since 2012, and have been impressed by their continued dedication to our game and its development. We’re confident that ‘Minecraft’ will continue to grow in an awesome way.”
The company said it expects most of Mojang’s employees to remain there for the time being, though Mojang’s three founders — including Persson — are leaving.
This is Satya Nadella’s first major acquisition since becoming Microsoft CEO in February.
In a July memo, in which Nadella outlined his vision for the company, he said the company would focus on “digital work and life experiences that are reinvented for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.”
“The single biggest digital life category, measured in both time and money spent, in a mobile-first world is gaming,” he said in the memo.
Given Nadella’s vision, the “Minecraft” acquisition is important to Microsoft’s mobile strategy, IDC analyst Al Hilwa said in an email Monday morning.
Hilwa continued:
“Microsoft is a mobile ecosystem owner and has no choice but to keep building it if it is to maintain its relevance in the long term. … ‘Minecraft’ strengthens Microsoft’s hand in the battle with Google, Apple and Amazon. … ‘Minecraft’ is a solid business with intense user loyalty. That it can be purchased with overseas cash is also a part of the attraction, but its strategic value is that it is another brick fortifying Microsoft’s consumer services, a key lever in its mobile relevance. Gamers on other platforms will demand ‘Minecraft’ for some time to come…
“Successful and sticky games like ‘Minecraft’ are powerful strategic consumer services for their owners. Microsoft is wise to build up its services assets to make its mobile platform more compelling.”
When you hear the words “tears of joy” you may think of a wedding, graduation, or some other emotion-laden event, but probably not an elementary school classroom and definitely not in the context of a school assignment. That was recently the case however in Chris Hanna’s fourth grade class in Goleta, California, where a student was overcome with emotion at the opportunity to use Minecraft for a class assignment on making a model of a California mission. One Minecraft mission project created by a student a few years ago has had over 22,000 views on YouTube. The California mission project has stepped into the 21st century!
But how does Minecraft connect with learning goals? Is it just the latest gaming fad or does it have real benefits for teaching and learning? If it does have benefits how might teachers and teacher education programs learn how to leverage it in spite of not fully knowing how it all works?
Still from Minecraft-San Diego Mission Project by Peter de Tagyos
First, a little background. Minecraft is akin to a digital sandbox where players “mine” to find desired resources, and “craft” to create and modify desired builds in a block-based environment. As the official Minecraft trailer (with over 110 million hits on YouTube) states, “with no rules to follow, the adventure is up to you.” My 11 year-old son seconds this notion by saying that he likes Minecraft because, “It can be anything you want it to be. There is no guidebook.” My 8 year old enjoys it because you “can make different things that you cannot make in real life.” Beyond that, Minecraft tends to be one of the leading causes of collaboration among my three sons as they talk, laugh and work together on various builds and adventures.
At this point you may be thinking “that is great that your kids (and millions of others) like the game, but what exactly does Minecraft afford for formal learning opportunities in schools and how does it connect to learning outcomes?” Perhaps you are also considering your own experiences with games in school like the classic Oregon Trail (death by dysentery anyone?) or others like Lemonade Stand, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Math Blaster, and the like that were supposed to transform teaching and learning, but have ended up like the floppy disk in the round file of digital history and wonder if Minecraft is just the latest “gaming fad” along those lines.
To explore these questions a bit more I reached out to three teachers with extensive experience using Minecraft in their schools. As a point of clarification, most schools are using MinecraftEdu which is an educational version of the enormously popular game.
Photo by Kevin Jarrett, Creative Commons License
James Pike, formerly a 3rd grade teacher at Ascension Catholic school in Los Angeles, used Minecraft with Math, Science, Computer Science, and English Language Arts. Students created models of cells starting with DNA, learned about area and perimeter and algebraic concepts and built “sets” related to the books and plays they are reading. Pike indicates that Minecraft changed the culture of his class. “Students were so engaged in learning, they would complain if they had to go to recess or DID NOT get homework. They were learning for their own reasons, not just to get a grade. When we took the final benchmark test of the year the class average was 84% in Math and 81% English Language Arts,” which was significantly greater than the school average.”
John Miller is a 7th grade History teacher at Chalone Peaks Middle School in King City, CA. He has spent extensive time with his students using Minecraft to support the development of literacy in his students, particularly English Language Learners, with learning experiences on Vikings, and the Tang Dynasty. Upcoming units will look at the Middle Ages, Crusade, and the Renaissance among other topics — all in a way that incorporates Minecraft and student developed creations. While they are “in Minecraft” students connect to other resources such as videos, websites, and documents that they interact with via reading and annotating. By the end of the year each of student “will have created a 40-50 page ‘historical novel.'”
As to the value of Minecraft, Miller sees it as “a 21st century version of experiential learning, or the learn by doing philosophy where students can experience a novel or develop and engineer an idea alone or collaboratively in an expansive virtual world with endless possibilities.” Because of these possibilities Miller has shifted his planning and pedagogy from being on the “front of the stage” to being a “designer behind the stage” working to “design lessons so that I get out of the way as quickly as possible” so that students can construct meaning through interactive approaches. That said his class use of Minecraft is not a free-for-all, but a highly structured and scaffolded exploration that has resulted in the most successful unit that he has taught in over twenty years of teaching.
Ancient Roman Bath House-Minecraft Tour, Moss Pike Harvard Westlake School
Moss Pike (no relation to Jim) had his Latin IA students at Harvard Westlake School in Los Angeles build their own versions of Roman structures with Minecraft. This was in order to understand how the Romans would have used them and to consider how public structures worked together. The project culminated in a digital tour of their structure shared on YouTube. Additional pictures and information are detailed on Pike’s blog. While some might wonder what does making a structure of a Roman bath have to do with learning a language like Latin, Pike argues that “project work and game-based opportunities of the sort provided by Minecraft are great ways for students to explore culture in active ways, especially if the projects have a social focus. By spending time on cultural fluency and people, we help our students to learn how to be more creative, collaborative, empathetic, etc., which in the long run is far more important than linguistic fluency on its own.” Based on the high levels of engagement and the quality of the work his students produced Pike believes it is just a matter of time for educators to “witness firsthand the power that game-based learning has within the classroom, I think we’ll see more experimentation with it. That’s not to say that everything will soon be game-based, but I think we’ll be able to find uses for it where we would have otherwise thought not possible or appropriate.”
Although these three teachers and others are highly favorable about Minecraft as a tool to engage students and give them opportunities to be collaborative and creative, there are others who think it is no more an educational fad and lacks alignment to standards. There are also concerns that Minecraft requires too much time for teachers to learn and takes too long to use in classroom settings. These concerns reflect many of the questions that K-12 education currently finds grappling with and exploring related to the role of teachers, the use of technology in teaching and learning, and issues of student engagement and achievement. These include questions like:
In the end the debates about Minecraft reflect tensions over educational values. Different teachers value certain teaching and learning experiences, probably based on their educational and cultural backgrounds and personal abilities and proclivities. This in turn leads to the prioritizing of particular skills that they seek to develop in their students. Whatever the priorities may be, schools and teachers need to deeply reflect on the learning experiences they are providing for students in a world where content is no longer limited to what can be found within the walls of schools and where the risk of disengagement is increasingly a threat due to the competition from technological alternatives both academic and non-academic. While the jury is still out on game based learning, and Minecraft is but one option for schools to utilize, educators should strongly explore its potential to foster in the areas of engagement, problem solving, collaboration and communication, and creativity in support of larger learning goals across content areas. While these thinking practices and skills may not be on any standardized test, they are on the test of life for the world that our students are being “prepared” for. All the content we teach students will not matter if we do not prepare students to learn how to learn and to do so in a community of learners.
