Minecraft Teaches Kids Type 1 Diabetes
Editors Note: Want to help fund this incredibly inventive tech project to help kinds learn about Type 1 Diabetes, visit here .
When a child is diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, not only is he or she faced with learning new complicated self-care, but theyre also tasked with explaining what it means to have the chronic illness to peers and their community. This often proves to be a challenge and when communication fails, a child can feel even more isolated. Imagine though a way in which a child could teach Type 1 to his or her peers that doesnt include clinical explanations but rather a hands on experience, an opportunity to walk in the newly diagnosed childs shoes. More, what if it were a game, a virtual world in which the peer group was already familiar operating.
Meet the man who designed it Brisbane native Joshua Wulf, a software engineer who worked for Red Hat, the worlds first billion-dollar open-source software company. Hes been programming since he was 10 years old; hes also the father to a son who was diagnosed at age 8. He tells Beyond Type 1 that he stumbled into teaching kids code because he wanted to teach his own son, but the kids were restless after school and didnt want to sit through another lesson. I saw that the kids loved Minecraft [a world-building video game] where they learned long codes to be able to do things and got to collaborate and compete with other children. Its like a sand pit with Lego blocks inside a computer, says Wulf. The kids were already motivated to play the game, so I wondered if we could incorporate learning with it, so we found a
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