This one is a little bit trickier to pull off, first you will need a friendly German colleague who gives you her Raspberry Pi. (I guess you could just buy one yourself too). Then you need kids who are mad keen on crafting games specifically Minecraft, or in my case Minetest. Minetest is an Open Source clone of Minecraft which means I can run it in on the Raspberry Pi pretty easily, and I can make any changes I like.
What I have done is set up Minetest running as a server on the Pi and running a world in which I have created a ‘Rewards hut’
In there is a locked chest which only I (well they could but they’d get in trouble if they did and they know that) can open
And a sign that tells them what to do to get the current reward.
You wont be able to read whats on the sign (unless you click through) but it says “Put your washing in the laundry for 10 steel ingots”. This actually works pretty well, you have to make the reward worth it, ie it would take them a bunch of time to get steel by mining. I guess it fits into a different definition of lazy, it does involve me making a bunch of things that can be used as rewards and going and changing the sign every so often. But it’s kinda fun too.
That’s good on so many levels. Captures both the art and artifice of parenting (not to mention design and life).
W/ bonus laughs! And short, short, sweet.
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