How to include Gamers

Problem
Adults are worried that children playing games are not learning anything?

Sub-problems:

How to convince parents that Coderdojo is worthwhile even though their children are playing games? How to set the right values so that kids get maximum value

Possible Solutions

 * Encourage gamers to sit together so they can communicate about games and give kids more interested in listening to what the mentor has to say some space.
 * Recognise that playing collaborative games is extremely beneficial, both as a social exercise and as teaching programatic thinking.
 * Check out this article and get an idea of how to use Minecraft in education.
 * Spend some time with them, try out building more ambitious logic engines in Minecraft with them, try out modding - Java programming - with them. There are lots of tutorials online.

External Links for Reference
How Games make Kids Smarter - Ted Talk Gabe Zichermann

How Gaming can make a better world -Ted Talk Jane Mcgonigal

Actual Experience
The general CoderDojo environment frequently has a distribution where there are fresh faces every week and require more close contact with the mentor, but often Ninjas who have been going for a while will play a lot of Minecraft or other game. This often leads to interesting questions about how they can modify the game to work in a new way, and mentors must be ready to give detailed answers on how this can be achieved.

UCD CoderDojo has not encountered this issue as the kids are younger and all enjoying doing Scratch which the adults see has direct connect to coding and therefore doesn't worry them.

At Science Gallery CoderDojo has found some of the most able kids are gamers. There's enthusiasm for getting behind the code of the Minecraft game. We need to create a chain of activity focused on Minecraft Modding.