Sweden's The Local are reporting that a school in Stockholm has introduced compulsory Minecraft lessons for their 13-year old students. I can now imagine school kids saying, "Maths? Lucky you! I've got double Minecraft." Not really, of course. I'm just jealous: my IT lessons were mostly about spreadsheets.

180 students at the Viktor Rydberg school will participate in the program. According to teacher Monica Ekman, "They learn about city planning, environmental issues, getting things done, and even how to plan for the future." Classes will focus on creating virtual worlds, and making electrical grids and water supply networks.

"It's been a great success and we'll definitely do it again," Ekman continued. "We think it's a fun way of learning and it's nice for the students to achieve something."

This isn't Minecraft's first trip to the scholastic rodeo. Joel Levin found fame as the Minecraft Teacher , after using the game as an element of his computer class. Mojang themselves plan to expand their educational remit by providing a free version of Minecraft's Pocket Edition for use with the Raspberry Pi .

Thanks, Slashdot and Gizmag .