Corporate Interests in Education Suck

I like using technology in the classroom. Not as an end goal in and of itself, but as an interesting and useful way for students to demonstrate their learning. Minecraft has proven a valuable technological tool for this, as students are engaged by and familiar with the game, and there is practically no limit to the things that can be built, making it applicable to learning areas across the curriculum.

MinecraftEdu by TeacherGaming was a useful mod to the original game. It ran well under my department's proxy, the server interface was intuitive and easy to use, and the teacher menu had a number of useful tools to helped make sure students remained focused on their learning tasks and not (too much) on aspects of exploring the world, or whatever, which of course happens from time to time.

Corporate Infiltration - the MSFT Megabeast

In 2014, Microsoft bought Minecraft for a whopping $2.5 billion. Apart from making Notch rich, this had little effect on the massive Minecraft gaming community as they left the vanilla game alone. Licensing arrangements remained the same and updates were still handled by the Mojang team. The game remained in Java and mods were still supported. MinecraftEdu wasn't lucky enough to have a similar fate.

In the interest of earning more coin, let's not for a second let it be thought that it was about student outcomes or anything else, Microsoft soon set its sights on Minecraft in education. They bought MinecraftEdu and soon after shut it down to develop their own 'Minecraft: Education Edition'. Away went mod support, away went the lifetime licensing arrangement, away went all of the coolest features of MinecraftEdu. I've previously whinged about some of my concerns here:

https://leehewes.wordpress.com/2016/10/05/buy-them-up-and-shut-them-down/

Quite simply, if MSFT had done to vanilla Minecraft what they did to MinecraftEdu, the gaming community would most likely have walked away and found something else. I guess they just figured with MinecraftEdu that they could do whatever they want because, "Hey, they're just teachers, what would they know about what works best in the classroom. Let's just walk all over it and rebrand."

Anyway, less than happy with what they'd done, I reluctantly applied to be one of MSFT's 'Minecraft Mentors' at the end of 2016. I figured if everything was changing, perhaps I could jump in early and maybe even help make suggestions regarding the direction of some of these changes. Oh, how wrong I was. In fact, the writing should have already been on the wall for me. I had already taken part in their 'education edition early access program' throughout 2016 and, despite early 2am video conferences joined in my own time (Southern Hemisphere), none of our concerns or suggestions regarding the upcoming changes were taken onboard. Regardless, I signed up.

Upon success, we were congratulated, given a free licence for the game and asked to do a few things for them throughout the year. They have a 'mentor of the week' each week throughout the year, where a chosen mentor shares how they use 'education edition'. Mentors can choose to write blog posts, share lesson plans, videos, etc. They also encouraged us to share how we were using education edition on social media. Basically, they wanted us to do some advertising.

Working at a school in an area of Sydney that is classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged, I was struggling to justify sending a note home to parents asking for them to pay for the new 'education edition' licensing fees. Hey, it only costs around $7 per student, which isn't much. However, I have students at school who do not join sporting programs because they can't afford to pay for the bus to the sporting grounds every away game. I couldn't bring myself to ask those students to pay to use a game in class that they had already been using without being charged to do so. Also, the new 'education edition' was inferior to the MinecrafEdu that they were already using.

I figured, hey, if I'm helping MSFT by being part of their mentor program by providing free advertising, perhaps they could help me a little. I decided to ask them for some licenses for my students, it couldn't hurt. After all, this was MSFT, the monolithic tech company that could afford to splash $2.5 billion for a video game and whatever undisclosed amount for MinecraftEdu, surely they could swing some licenses for one of their mentors working at a school in a disadvantaged area.

They said no.

Whilst I wasn't entirely surprised, it still felt like a bit of a kick in the guts. They wanted me to spruik their wares but weren't willing to help my students. The licenses would cost them nothing.

Anyway, when they contacted me and asked me to provide their 'mentor of the week' post (advertise for them), I told that I hadn't been using their product and I no longer wanted to part of their program. They said "bon voyage".

Since that time they have run a 'Minecraft Pilot Program' at several NSW schools (which I was not asked to be a part of for obvious reasons, hint - not towing the MSFT line) for which I can only assume free licenses were handed out. They have also managed to make 'education edition' available for all Victoria and NSW schools (as of term 3). Massive enterprise arrangement deals are signed as part of this process and massive amounts of government coin are flung toward corporate bank accounts. I never for a second thought I'd be able to stop it, I just couldn't bring myself to be a cog in their greasy, corporate machine.

Call me cynical, but like I said earlier, I don't think it's about student learning on MSFT's end, rather, further corporate infiltration into the education sector.

Of course, the teachers using Minecraft in the classroom do so for the benefit of their students, it's just a shame that it's now being pushed primarily by a corporate entity with profit margins rather than learning outcomes in its sights.

Waking up and checking Twitter this morning, I found photos of 'global mentors' sharing their Microsoft swag as thank you gifts for their 'work'. It just brings it home even further for me that it's all about advertising. Their celebratory tweets can be found under the now promotional #MinecraftEdu and #MinecraftMentor twitter hashtags.

Whilst there's next to nothing I can do about their corporate infiltration, I can at least hold my head up high and say that I did what I considered right for my students. I'm also looking into alternatives such as Minetest.

https://www.minetest.net/

It's free, open source, community oriented, supports mods and runs seamlessly under my department's proxy. The server hosting aspects of Minetest which support more than the piddly 30 students supported by 'education edition' make it a real contender. Plus I'll be able to teach students about the value of open source software and that there are alternatives to the monoliths. They'll get to learn new commands and controls and may even get into modding. We'll see.

Like I said, I can't do much, but at least I have choice and the ability to think critically and learn to use new tools.

I guess you can consider this post and a move to Minetest as my own little rage against the machine, or my mouse squeak against the corporate vacuum cleaner intent on fleecing as many pockets as possible.

Corporate interests in education suck.

Image found at link below after searching 'Grand Theft Minecraft'

https://www.flickr.com/photos/downloadsourcefr/16448236122