Minecraft releases free, educational materials through Marketplace
To keep parents and children alike from going stir-crazy, a lot of brands and content-providers have been releasing free or affordable materials and activities that they can do together. After all, life still goes on even as we continue to battle this COVID-19 pandemic. The latest new educational materials come from a pretty unlikely source: Minecraft. The popular game developed by Microsoft-owned Mojang has released some free educational content on their Minecraft Marketplace so kids can both play and learn from their materials.
They have uploaded some content from the Minecraft: Education Edition to the Marketplace so people can access it for free. These include “touring” the International Space Station and “exploring” what’s inside The Human Eye among other lessons. You can play with these worlds on your own or with the kids, parents, or friends, all from the comfort of your home, since you shouldn’t be going outside anyway.
Mojang has also released 10 free lessons created by their Marketplace community creators: Everbloom, Jigarbov, Lifeboat, Razzleberries, The World Foundry, Blockworks, and Imagiverse. You’ll get various lessons about Greek history, marine biology, bees, fractals, renewable energy etc. There are creative writing activities, build challenges, tricky puzzles, among other things. It should be a fun way to learn, even if your kid is resisting actually studying. Mention Minecraft and they might get the “books” cracking.
There are now over half a billion students that are temporarily out of school due to quarantine and shelter-in-place ordinances in various states and countries. So parents and educators around the world are scrambling to create digital lessons and this is Mojang and Minecraft’s contribution “to help keep young minds sharp and stimulated,” according to Mojang’s Sofia Dankis.
The lessons are now available and free to download from the Minecraft Marketplace until June 30. They’re compatible with any device that is running the Bedrock Edition of the game, so Java players will have to find another way of educating and entertaining young minds.
