Another big win for ThoughtSTEM, the San Diego company launched by two recent Ph.D. alumni of the CSE department. The computer science education startup has been awarded a $750,000 grant from NSF's Small Business Innovation Research program to expand use of ThoughtSTEM's LearnToMod software that helps teach kids how to modify ("mod" in the lingo) elements of the popular Minecraft game environment. According to ThoughtSTEM CEO Stephen Foster (Ph.D. '14), LearnToMod has taught computer science to over 50,000 students, and those students used the software to produce over 1.5 million Minecraft mods.
"The potential impact that Minecraft could have on computer science education in this country is huge," said Foster (above). "Millions of kids who love Minecraft are interested in learning how to mod. With the National Science Foundation's help, we have big plans to make LearnToMod the most cutting-edge platform for CS education."
While students can mod on their own, Foster said that over 2,000 educators worldwide are already using LearnToMod in their classrooms. Kids who love Minecraft can come up with an idea to change and improve the gameplay by using an easy, drag-and-drop programming interface. Since the software's launch in 2015, ThoughtSTEM received NSF funding to craft new tutorials for teaching students how to mod in Javascript, and Foster created new tools to assist teachers using LearnToMod in classrooms. With the new two-year grant from NSF, ThoughtSTEM developers aim to make it even easier for students and teachers to start using the platform for Minecraft modding and computer science education in general. LearnToMod is an online integrated development environment (IDE), software that provides all the tools necessary to mod Minecraft, including unlockable badges, a free Minecraft server (where students can test their mods using the Vox-L game engine), tutorials, and an online community.
Meanwhile, ThoughtSTEM co-founder and CSE alumna Sarah Guthals (Ph.D. '14) is now 'emeritus' at the company, but taking her expertise to a new frontier: working with GitHub's Social Impact team. Guthals (at right) is designing, building and testing a new GitHub product that will engage young children online "in really neat ways." It's an online space for under-13-year-old children to build, share, collaborate and contribute to digital artifacts. She joined GitHub as an independent contractor in April, after stepping away from her previous role as chief technology officer for ThoughtSTEM. Earlier this year, Guthals was named to Forbes magazine's latest annual list of 30 Under 30 in Science.