Minecraft tutorials in te reo

FUN LEARNING: New Minecraft tutorials on the popular Code.org website have been made available in te reo Maori for the first time. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

Microsoft's annual Hour of Code event had a distinctly Kiwi flavour this year with new Minecraft tutorials on the popular Code.org web site available in te reo Maori for the first time.

Students from Malfroy Primary School, Rotorua Boys' High School and Rotorua Girls' High School joined thousands around the world last week as they jumped into the world of computer coding.

More than 30 million young people worldwide used the Code.org tutorials to learn computer science basics last year.

As part of Computer Science Education Week, OMGTech! ran an Hour of Code event at Rotorua Girls' High School last week where about 40 students between the ages of 6 and 17 participated in the hands-on learning tutorials in te reo Maori.

The tutorials allow players to take complete control of a game and create their own rules and characters, stimulating creativity whilst learning.

For this year's campaign, Microsoft New Zealand partnered with technology education group OMGTech! which sought assistance from professional learning and development organisation CORE Education to translate the Minecraft coding sessions into te reo Maori.

"We want to make sure that we are encouraging Maori participation in digital technology, and to do this it is vital to have quality digital resources in te reo Maori.

"We know that technology careers create high value jobs and we need to be advancing that dream in our children. We need to do everything we can to encourage them to consider the opportunities that technology can give them," Zoe Timbrell, founder and general manager of OMGTech! said.

Wawaro Te Whaiti of CORE Education said they were excited to have contributed to making Hour of Code more accessible to students in the Maori medium, thereby helping students increase their participation in computer science and the language of digital technologies.

"This is a fairly new realm for te reo Maori and requires some very careful thinking about terminology and the development of language. We've made a great start, but there is still a lot more to achieve."

Anne Taylor, schools manager for Microsoft New Zealand, said that Microsoft hoped to support expanding the translation effort though the Code.org crowd sourced translation service, so eventually all tutorials on Code.org would be available in te reo.