[Hamara-devel] Should hamara be an educational distribution or an edutainment distribution ?

[Vikas Tara]

On 06/05/15 17:20, shirish wrote:
> Hi all,
> This is something I have been thinking about for quite sometime. I 
> would argue for the latter, sharing ideas and examples and hoping for 
> feedback.
>
> 1. The difference between the two is enormous, as the repository would 
> double in size than what just having educational software and tools 
> would be (not thinking of development tools but know they would be 
> there as well.)
>
> 2. When I will be saying 'by people' I mean students and teachers in 
> schools, not us, we would be providing more of enabling services 
> rather than taking an active role in such projects.
>
> 3. The value of an edutainment distribution would be enormous provided 
> though we have people who can use and add value to it. Few games which 
> have enormous learning potential :-
>
> a. Minetest - one of the many open-source implementation of minecraft. 
> While anybody who has played minecraft even for a while would know how 
> addictive it is, it also has lot of potential for learning and there 
> are whole communities dedicated to modding minecraft. Minetest is just 
> one of those in debian
>
> See :-
>
> [$] aptitude search minetest
>
>
> i minetest                                                        - 
> Multiplayer infinite-world block sandbox
> i minetest-data                                                   - 
> Multiplayer infinite-world block sandbox (data files)
> p minetest-dbg                                                    - 
> Multiplayer infinite-world block sandbox (debugging symbols)
> p minetest-mod-mobf                                               - 
> Minetest mod providing a framework for creating mobs
> p minetest-mod-moreblocks                                         - 
> Minetest mod - More Blocks
> p minetest-mod-moreores                                           - 
> Minetest mod - More Ores
> p minetest-mod-pipeworks                                          - 
> Minetest mod - Pipeworks
> p minetest-mod-worldedit                                          - 
> Minetest mod - in-game world editor
> p minetest-server                                                 - 
> Multiplayer infinite-world block sandbox (server)
>
>
> Github has close to 150 repositories which have various mods of 
> minecraft happening. I would probably do a detail snapshot of minetest 
> and some of the other popular open-source mods for minecraft which are 
> out there. It is easy to say that kids love it and in the Indian 
> context would be much more useful than elsewhere for number of 
> reasons. We could be in position to build more unique tools and 
> objects with the variety of cultures we have. Potential is just enormous.
>
> 2. 0ad - See play0ad.com . Good thing about this game :-
>
> a. Uses blender so could be used to show 3d assets and how they are 
> modelled, vertices and what all goes into planning a AAA game. It is 
> not AAA game but comes close to it.
>
> b. History and Research - If people have hung around the wildfire 
> forums a bit they would see whole lot of research specifically with 
> history goes in there. There are lot of history buffs in the forum.
>
> In fact 0ad has people from Maurya dynasty in-game which is a good 
> starting point to learn our own history. There is much that can be 
> improved upon the civilization if we have people who are willing to do 
> this.
>
> c. Strategy :- The game itself is billed as a medieval strategy game 
> with timelines, so people have to constantly balance between different 
> resources and risks they need to take. There are lot of 'let's play' 
> videos that can be seen on youtube to have a sense of both the 
> playability and the various strategies that the players follow with 
> the playthroughs.
>
>
> There are many, many such games which have the potential for enriching 
> the distribution as well as make it easier to penetrate educational 
> institutes as well.
>
> Looking for feedback from people on what they think of the above, 
> there are and would be other criteria that we would need to have so 
> that we always have fresher and better developed communities than 
> there are atm but that's a topic for another day.
>
> Till later.
+1 for edutainment - it's much more likely to gel with young users if 
there are games involved.

Thanks for the minetest pointer - I hadn't seen that before and my kids 
are minecraft addicts. They will be apt-getting it this evening :)

I was thinking of a wiki section and blog posts around gaming - so 
perhaps a few of us can devote some time to that?