Microsoft Offers Free Educational Content in Minecraft Marketplace
Video game Minecraft is offering lessons exploring topics from human anatomy to astronomy to history and beyond.
Educators around the world are doing everything they can to provide digital lessons for the half a billion students who are out of school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not an easy task and Microsoft is doing its part to help keep young minds stimulated.
If you head over to the Minecraft Marketplace, you will find some lessons from Minecraft: Education Edition in a new Education category. These educational worlds can be played on your own, with your kids, parents or friends. From the comfort of your home, you can tour the International Space Station or even explore the inside of a human eye. Microsoft has also included ten worlds from the Marketplace creator community. Thanks to creators Everbloom, Jigarbov, Lifeboat, Razzleberries, The World Foundry, Blockworks, and Imagiverse you can explore renewable energy, marine biology, Greek history, and more. The worlds include lesson plans like creative writing activities, build challenges, and tricky puzzles.
All of these worlds are launching today and are free to download through June 30, 2020.
Anyone with Minecraft for Bedrock platforms can find these worlds by launching Minecraft and visiting the in-game store. Minecraft is available on Android & iOS, Kindle Fire, Windows 10 PC, Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Fire TV, Xbox One, Windows MR, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.
Originally launched in 2016, Minecraft: Education Edition was specifically designed by Mojang Studios and Xbox Game Studios to be used in classrooms.
In related news, Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer today published a blog post about gaming in the time of coronavirus, saying that the company was working to maintain services in the face of unprecedented demand.
“We understand the important role gaming is playing right now to connect people and provide joy in these isolating and stressful times, and our teams are working diligently to ensure we can be there for our players. To that end, we are actively monitoring performance and usage trends to ensure we’re optimizing the service for our customers worldwide and accommodating for new growth and demand.”