Microsoft announced it will be releasing an educational version of Minecraft, the popular online sandbox building game the company acquired in 2014. Minecraft: Education Edition will be released as a free trial this summer to existing Minecraft users, according to Mojang, the Microsoft subsidiary acquired for $2.5 billion in September 2014.
The new title builds on MinecraftEdu, “a version of Minecraft built for the classroom [which] has been used in over 40 countries,” Mojang said in a statement. Microsoft acquired MinecraftEdu this week, the statement said. Terms of that deal were not disclosed.
As with the public game, the updated classroom edition of Minecraft will continue to teach “essential life-skills like tree-punching and good Creeper-defense,” per Mojang, but will also feature purpose-built “lessons” to help educators instruct students in areas ranging from basic problem-solving to history, art, and STEM disciplines.
Lessons include “Redstone Lodge,” a Minecraft: Education Edition mod, which “gives the full range of electrical engineering principles, logic gates, and even music composition within Minecraft” and the bomb-shelter building mod “Anderson Shelters,” which promises to teach both World War II history and physics.
Last year, Microsoft introduced Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta as the first version of the game with Redmond’s stamp on it, as part of the rollout of the software giant’s latest PC operating system. But the rollout of a Minecraft version specifically tailored for the classroom has been cooking for even longer.
Back when Mojang was snapped up by Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella described the game as the “perfect tool for introducing STEM subjects to students,” PCWorld noted. Microsoft claims Minecraft is “already being used in more than 7,000 classrooms around the world,” the tech journal noted, but appears to be preparing to try to grow that distribution to 10 times or even 100 times that number. Redmond is now looking for partners to develop a “big ecosystem” around Minecraft: Education Edition to achieve that goal.
The first group of ecosystem builders Microsoft and Mojang are trying to get on board is educators themselves. On the new, fairly barebones Education Edition site, educators areencouraged to register for a 90-minute “Intro to Minecraft” workshop, which kick off Wednesday and are held three times a day on weekdays and twice a day on Saturdays.
“In these hands-on workshops designed specifically for educators, you’ll learn the basics to survive your first night and explore Minecraft projects from classrooms around the world,” the pitch promises. The workshops are run by educator and Immersive Minds director Stephen Reid.
Educators interested in Minecraft: Education Edition can also see live demos of the game being used as an educational tool via the Education Edition website. The live demos run 20 minutes and are being offered twice a day from Wednesday through Friday and once on Saturday.
In addition to the PC edition of Minecraft, Microsoft also offers a version for the Xbox One and at E3 last year, the company showcased Minecraft on its future HoloLens augmented reality headset.