Minecraft, the original block building game, is nothing short of a phenomenon, having gone from tiny indie game to household name in a few short years. Gaining a huge fanbase thanks to the ease with which players can create their own worlds - and even work together on more ambitious projects - all while fighting off monsters and zombies, it was only a matter of time before enterprising minds decided to see how well Minecraft would work in a school, as part of the new trend for "games based learning". Keen to see if it would help his students learn, a few years ago, a teacher made his own education-themed modification of Minecraft, named MinecraftEdu - and now Microsoft have bought his company out, with plans to launch their own classroom focused version of the game, starting in Summer 2016 a new and exciting edition to the Minecraft family will become available for use in the classroom - and even better, it'll have a free trial, so teachers can try before buying.
While it may sound a little bit dull, Minecraft: Education Edition isn't actually all that different to the Minecraft kids know and love at the moment - and that's the trick. While new features include a teacher mode, giving teachers the power to move students, and otherwise manipulate the world their class are exploring, all from a god view, everything that made Minecraft popular is still here - including the creation aspects. What's gone are any enemies, so kids can build and explore in peace - and the only real limit is their teacher's imagination.
Of course, not all subjects lend themselves perfectly to Minecraft, but of those that do, this could be a great way to explain things in terms that kids will understand. Everyone remembers learning how addition and subtraction worked in school, playing around with blocks to give numbers a physical representation we could understand - and Minecraft can do the same thing. More advanced projects - like Humanities World - even set children collaborative learning projects, like working together to create a Spartan style school, putting what they've learnt into practice, or even letting them explore a Roman village, made in Minecraft, with notes and text all around the place explaining what everything is. Bringing history to life, could this help kids really take an interest in, and understand what they're learning - or will most simply be too distracted at the idea of playing Minecraft in the classroom to really take anything in?
Along with learning, it's hoped that the new classroom tool will help children work together as a team, teaching important social skills along the way. At the time of writing this Minecraft Edu will be available in English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Dutch, Russian with more translations coming in the coming months.
Quite how much of a hit Minecraft: Education Edition becomes remains to be seen, but it's just one of several new "game-based" learning projects that aim to make learning, well, fun. If it comes with the right tutorials to help teachers get stuck in, and plenty of pre-built items to make creating their virtual lessons quick, it could be the best game-related thing to happen in classrooms since the BBC Micro.
