Kids Can Now Learn Programming With Minecraft
November 27, 2015
Minecraft, as one of many popular kids’ title, is now joining code.org to bring children’s affection for it into learning programming. Microsoft, Minecraft’s recently bought-in owner, has reached an agreement with code.org as announced on Monday.
The Minecraft based coding tutorial has 14 levels to progressively learn coding with a free-play board included at the end, according to Microsoft’s Minecraft Education director Deirdre Quarnstrom. Microsoft is a major financial backer of code.org.
For code.org, this is not the only popular title there is. The computer science education group uses games themed on Disney movie ‘Frozen’, viral smartphone game Flappy Bird and others to design its programming tutorials to attract children into learning to code using by dragging and dropping various coding blocks. The new agreement is not the only one for the site this week. code.org has also added a Star Wars themed lineup to their repertoire.
Code.org launched in 2013 by Hadi Partovi, a former Microsoft executive, with his brother, Ali, to make computer-science education more available to children, particularly focusing on bringing more girls and otherwise children with non-white background in. As of now, more than 100 million students have experimented with their Hour of Code, which uses contemporary titles mentioned above. They also encourage schools to participate in their offerings during Computer Science Education Week, which is on Dec 7-13 this year. They also have curricula for teachers or caretakers so that they can better teach childern computer science.