Microsoft Corp. has partnered with Code.org to use its popular-computer game, Minecraft, to help students learn computer programming with the creation of a 14-level tutorial.

Soon enough, the tutorial will be available online for kids to use right away to learn computer programming skills.

"Kids will be able to go to Code.org’s website and find a tutorial with 14 levels of Minecraft including a free-play board, said Deirdre Quarnstrom, director of Minecraft education at Microsoft, which is Code.org’s biggest financial backer,” according to Bloomberg.

The tutorial is part of Code.org’s Hour of Code tutorials, which uses well-known forms of entertainment to get kids into computer programming during Computer Science Education week, which this year is Dec. 7 -13. 

Minecraft was, according to Code.org’s founder Hadi Partovi, the most popular request from students and parents.

"The open-ended nature of Minecraft’s game play will help teach students programming skills that have been hard to demonstrate with previous lessons that involved guiding a character through a fixed landscape,” Bloomberg said.

The partnership is just another way Minecraft is being used an influential educational tool.

Last month, we reported on how Minecraft is now being used as a tool to teach chemistry after two educators and undergraduate students created a Minecraft “world with structures of proteins, chemicals and even some chemical history” called MolCraft.

Read the full story.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

11/17/2015