You may love building the perfect, serene wonderland and destroying blocks or zombies in Minecraft, but Microsoft wants students to only see the game as a leisurely activity. At the #MicrosoftEDU event organized in New York, the Redmond giant has announced a coding tool which enables you, a Minecraft player, to build structures within the game using JavaScript.
The Minecraft: Education Edition has already reached over 100 different countries, with more than 50 million sessions conducted on Minecraft Hour of Code. Thus, the Redmond giant decided it was time to provide students and Minecraft enthusiasts who want to try a hand at coding a dedicated, but simple tool for the same. The Code Builder for Minecraft: Education Edition was born out of this need to make learning fun and intuitive, especially when the curriculum is lagging behind.
This new coding platform enables you to write simple code to drive functions within Minecraft, such as exploring the deadly desert for water. It has further been simplified with the integration of Tynker, which allows you to drag and drop code modules to build tunnels, a game pun mentioned on stage.
The student’s interest is further piqued with the addition of a robot or Agent which does all the program’s actions. While you can write code in JavaScript, the Agent makes the construction process automatic — but you still need to rack your brains to think of algorithms. It can easily teach you the basic concepts of programming, such as variables and loops, to get you ready for the next frontier.
As the students in the video attached underneath mention, this code builder tool enables them to interact with the huge world they already know and love through a different perspective. This is the best part of the tool, which looks surprisingly simple and fun to learn or practice coding. The Code builder for Minecraft: Education Edition has been made available in beta preview for free of cost for students and schools among others.
