Minecraft is enhanced lego :P

This is the first extension to my session prezi on using Minecraft in Bratislava, 1st SKA International EFL Conference:

Minecraft is basically the same as Lego.

Lego makes it possible for you to build existing structures following a graphic manual, you can build your own creation, previously designed or not. With the finished structures and figures you can play role games. You can show your creations to your friends (peer recognition bang bang bang), you can cooperate when building something new. You can build anything, the limit is only the number and type of blocks you possess.

Imagine a building game that has even more types of blocks, the certain blocks have certain features, one of the little figures is actually you, some of the others may be your friends, and there are also independent figures who are friendly or hostile.

You can play 'survival' mode: you have to acquire and craft all the things you build from, plus there are adversities you have to cope with, there are mobs that want to kill or hurt you, you can die of hunger, etc. The other mode is 'creative', where mobs can't hurt you, you cannot really die, you have unlimited access to building blocks, you can fly, and a factor not to forget is that your parents don't have to spend a fortune on your passion.

Unlike other digital games games, there are no scores, badges or leaderboards, but there is peer recognition, cooperation among several members of the (international) gamer society, there are stories and achievements (very mich like in real life), there is a sense of agency over what you do, also there is always a smarter, achievable goal. And there are hundreds of YouTubers who are willing to share their knowledge about the how and the what.

By now Lego has made its way to being a generally accepted 'meaningful' game, Minecraft is very similar in this sense. The only negative thing I can note is the fact that it sticks kids to the screen. (Just like Lego sticks them to the carpet, but never mind.) There must be a sensible amount of time spent on anything in life. Including sitting in a classroom and chewing your pencil, looking out of the window and thinking about funny gym ball fail videos.

Another thing that comes along with Minecraft is the community and the subculture.

Gamers cooperate worldwide, what is important for us is the community built around the YouTubers, videobloggers who create gameplay videos.

Minecraft has inspired music, stories, books, visual art, all sorts of videos, a mythology, anything that language teachers can ever build on and squeeze the last drop out of.

What I perceive is that my students, regardless of their age or gender, want to belong to the Minecrafter community. What is more, if you, as a teacher appear to them as one of this community, it may mean trust and sometimes even respect.

My English could be better. I don’t fully understand the word ‘dignity’, that is.

Who deserves our Christian compassion?

My father died as an alcoholic. He was the son of a man I never knew, soldiers in soviet army uniforms just popped in one day (when my dad was a toddler), they took my grandpa. My dad grew up with a working mom (no 8-hour workday, no grandmas, no babysitters) and 3 siblings. His little sister cooked when she was 5 (yes, she cooked, my 5 year old grandson is capable of this and more, luckily not out of necessity, but because of a super great mom), until she died at the age of 7. When I was a kid we would visit her grave in a nearby town, but somehow it disappeared.

So my dad grew up in the fields, on the hills, playing football and drawing.

He was a gentle human being, having a huge dosage of talent and creativity, lacking a secure background or an ample amount of family warmth.

He lead the life of a semi-mawerick, would have been a proper hippie if he had been born somewhere else.

But no, he was a small-town sign painter, struggling with the realities of life in the socialist part of Europe, Hungary. I don’t really know why he found peace in alcohol, I was too much of a kindergartener to detect and understand it.

He chose a lifestyle that slowly killed him.

He was an alcoholic, it was Christmas, he had just been through the procedure when they withdrew alcohol from him, after the 4 weeks of the psychiatric ward, and a couple of weeks of rehab. He was at home for Christmas, because my mom insisted, even though it was risky. Christmas is Christmas.

He was not himself. He was sober but he had those minutes of ‘pause’. He froze up, like a computer.

Once there was this sound from the room he was supposed to have an after-lunch nap, the room I’m writing this right now, he was on the floor.

I went with him in the ambulance The staff were really nice, 25th December, amazing people.

We arrived at the hospital, no one around, a noob on duty.

My dad was wearing his fav clothes. You know, this man, once a thriving talent, someone who used to be a ladies’ man, this creative human, now his favourite clothes were really worn off, paint-stained, bad quality, shabby, grey, smelly rugs. His face (all the ladies in the offices as well as my kindergarten teacher used to be in love with him) was thin, he had a beard. His eyebrows were bushy, only his brown eyes were the same, the eyes of that big child I’d grown up with.

Years before this happened I gave up on them, him and my mom. As a kid I couldn’t convince them, as a teen I begged them to stop, in my early twenties I sometimes shouted, broke the glasses and the vodka bottles, then I gave up.

The doctor didn’t send him to that expensive brain scan. He made us wait in the corridor for hours. He wasn’t really certain about it. My father was only an alcoholic in cheap, old clothes. For him. Sure, every day he meets these people whose choice is to kill themselves slowly, slowly, glass by glass, drop by drop. He said there is nothing he can see, he should be taken to another hospital. He couldn’t clearly put my dad in the homeless category. The ambulance doctors and paramedics were different, it was dignity. This is not that they were kind or smiley. They were treating him as a human. The other hospital was very busy, they didn’t have the equipment, they wanted to send him back to the first one for that scan, the previous doctor said it was not serious enough, the young ambulance doctor was shouting with anger but  well... Then we were sent back to the rehab hospital in our car. My dad wanted to talk to me, he started a sentence but then there was a block, he couldn’t finish what he wanted to say. I had learned about aphasia, I thought it was some sort of a stroke, but I wasn’t a doctor and ...

On the next morning he was taken back to the first hospital. It had been a stroke, and I freaked out at the doctor who was on duty then, the one who was not to blame. She did everything for my dad, no matter his clothes or his addiction. She did it with dignity, after all my shouting at her, losing temper, like an idiot. She cried then, she shouted back. But she treated my dad (and me) as humans.

Then one night there was this phone call, this African neurologist called me to tell me my dad had just passed away.

Now in Hungary we have people who just don’t look good to us. Their skin is dark, the women wear hijabs. Some of the Hungarians are afraid, out of mere ignorance. Some think that these refugees don’t score as high as Europeans. When Hungarian people were refugees in other countries, it was a different story, they say. They share a common culture with the accepting countries. Yeah sure.  So you mean, if they look European, they deserve dignity?  If they have no hijabs there is zero terrorist threat? You mean they don’t count as people? You will get no health points for compassion for them in heaven?

Hmmmmmm... Jesus was not so picky. He didn’t mind leprosis. He didn’t mind crucifixion.

I still don’t really understand the word dignity, the word  I know too well is hypocrisy.