After buying the open-world video game “Minecraft” from its Swedish developer Mojang back in 2014 for a whopping $2.5 billion, Microsoft is now all set to take its acquisition to new and better heights.
Drawing on the feature of “Minecraft” as a popular tool to teach children about countless subjects including art, geography, and computer science, the Redmondian company has developed a tweaked version of the game which it called as “MinecraftEdu” specifically meant for educators and teachers, notes Engadget.
But Microsoft did not stop there as it just launched on January 19 a new version of the game called “Minecraft: Education Edition” which include features that are not found in the vanilla version of “Minecraft” including enhanced maps with a coordinate system to help teachers and students navigate together, digital portfolios, and simple world importing and exporting.
The new edition of the game will be available initially as a free trial beginning this coming summer, before individual and group pricing models are introduced for academic institutions who may want to have long-term access.
Encouraging the shift to ‘Minecraft: Education Edition’
Most of the educators are still using “MinecraftEdu” and in order to encourage their eventual shift to “Minecraft: Education Edition,” Microsoft will be offering them 12 months of free access to the new game.
The American tech company explained that it has been working with the game creator TeacherGaming regarding new tools, including a second screen experience for teachers.
Microsoft has been very supportive of educators through its Windows. Thus, it was just only fitting for the company to embrace and ultimately sell “Minecraft” as a platform for teachers.
If “Minecraft” continues to be successful in schools as Microsoft hopes or projects it to be, it could actually rival the revenue stream of its Office software suit.
Customized for schools
“Minecraft: Education Edition” is actually “Minecraft” that is customized for schools. When it tweaked the version of the game, Microsoft does not just want kids to explore dark caverns, endless plains, and procedurally-generated mountains.
The company wants children to explore places carved out of the real world including the ancient Pompeii, the pyramids of Giza, and Greek temples, as well as other places they can learn from, details The Verge.
The changes from “Minecraft” to “Minecraft: Education Edition” are not dramatic because it is essentially the same game that gamers have been playing for years, but with a few extra features to allow for ease of use.
Some of these include improving the game’s mapping feature so that a class can actually find its way around, letting teachers lock in certain resources for students to use, and adding an in-game camera and scrapbook to handle screenshots for cataloguing where they have been through.
The American tech company said that it is keeping the changes minor as it does not want to turn “Minecraft” into a straight educational product because it is still a game first and foremost, which makes kids interested in using it. But it has applications in the classroom too, making it a dual-purpose tool.
Microsoft has also announced that it is also launching a website where educators can submit “Minecraft” worlds and lesson plans for others to go along with them.
The company also made it clear that it does not intend to build out worlds and lesson plans using its own resources. Instead, it is hoping to foster a vibrant community that shall be able to stand on its own. In that way, a teacher could go to the website, find a setting that she is interested in, and immediately be able to send her student off into the game.