Minecraft Is Now Free In All Secondary Schools In Northern Ireland

As part of an initiative set up by Northern Ireland’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Minecraft will now be distributed to all schools in the country for free.

Free.

That figure includes over 200 schools and up to 30 different libraries. All will be given codes to MinecraftEdu, the educational version of the game.

It’s part of a project for Northern Ireland’s annual CultureTECH festival.

“The level of engagement is the first thing you notice,” explained Mark Nagurski, chief executive of CultureTECH. “This is work that the kids really want to do and if you’re able to harness that enthusiasm, energy and creativity you end up with a pretty significant learning opportunity.”

Watching the world slowly awaken to the potential of video games as an educational tool has truly been a beautiful thing — but has any game been more of a catalyst in this area than Minecraft? For the longest time we’ve wondered if a product could truly provide gaming with mainstream cultural capital, or hoped that broader demographics could see the potential for games instead of harping on about negative qualities. If you had told me back in 2011, when Mojang launched Minecraft, that this retro-styled collection of block would end up being ‘that’ game. I would have openly mocked you.

But here it is. Minecraft continues to do incredible things in all different avenues of life and I don’t see it stopping any time soon.

What’s the limit for Minecraft? It’s almost impossible to tell from our present, limited perspective. It’s going to be as fundamental to our children’s lives as LEGO or jigsaw puzzles.

Minecraft free for every secondary school in Northern Ireland [The Guardian]


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