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Weekly Short
6 October, 2023
If you think Minecraft is just a game, think again. The best-selling game of all time is diving into the world of education, becoming a building block for wider social and environmental change.
For those not in the know, Minecraft is a sandbox video game, allowing players to create, explore and survive in a world of their own making, made completely of blocks. Minecraft Education, a separate arm of the business, provides educational content for schools globally, helping students learn about a wide variety of subjects via creative gameplay.
And now, in collaboration with The Crown Estate, it is using immersive and interactive game-based learning to inspire and engage the next generation of ‘green’ professionals, through the release of two new worlds to explore.
The Offshore Wind Power Challenge tasks students with powering a coastal village by designing and building an offshore wind farm, whilst balancing the needs of marine life and fisheries – providing much needed insight into the value and challenges of producing renewable energy. And in the Conservation Quest at Windsor Great Park, students become a conservation apprentice at one of the UK’s most renowned environmental and ecological sites, which is also one of The Crown Estate’s most iconic locations. Through a series of quests, students manage the needs of wildlife species spanning approximately 4,500 acres, and in doing so learn about the water cycle, the food chain, the conservation code, and environmental management.
This a fantastic example of how educating people in a medium they are familiar with, and most importantly enjoy, can be an incredibly powerful tool. Kudos to Microsoft UK and The Crown Estate for this thought-provoking collaboration!
By Budd Nicholson