More than 50 million downloads in under two months: that is the figure Microsoft gave the Los Angeles Times for the educational content it made free in Minecraft on March 24. The Times reported the count on May 18.
The giveaway covers lessons that had mostly been confined to schools. Minecraft: Education Edition has hosted virtual curricula for the past few years, with students visiting global monuments, working on math and coding, or exploring the human body and a NASA-approved trip to the International Space Station. Microsoft brought that material in-house in 2016, after educators in the Minecraft community began it. Most of it had been open only to schools and teachers on Microsoft education accounts. In March, Microsoft put an assortment of it on the Minecraft Marketplace at no cost.
The terms
The BBC set out the offer when it launched: 12 digital lessons, available through the end of June, with worlds on the space station and the interior of the eye. Microsoft’s blog said the aim was to help the half a billion students out of school during the pandemic.
Beyond the lesson plan
The Times also reported a use nobody had planned. Students at UC Berkeley held a mock commencement inside Minecraft, with Chancellor Carol T. Christ speaking alongside musical performances, one of many graduations staged in the game around the world.
Helen Chiang, studio head at Mojang Studios, said that event arose without any push from the company. “It actually would have been really difficult for us to re-create all these colleges,” she said, adding that Berkeley students could build their own campus with the tools provided.
The game itself is large. Chiang put the game’s lifetime sales above 200 million copies, and the Times set the moment beside Travis Scott’s Fortnite concert, which drew more than 27 million participants.
Sources
- Coronavirus: Minecraft offers free lessons to children (BBC News)
- Coronavirus: Minecraft offering free lessons to help kids off school (BBC Newsround)
- Minecraft is for learning? In COVID time, 50 million downloads of free education content (Los Angeles Times)
