To the community of 100 million players around the world, Minecraft represents many things – creativity, strategy, collaboration and survival, just to name a few. What many may not realize is that Minecraft has the power to transform learning on a global scale. By creating a virtual world and then advancing in it, students learn digital citizenship, empathy, social skills and even improve their literacy – while getting real time feedback on their problem solving skills from the teacher. In fact, more than 7,000 teachers around the world are already using Minecraft in the classroom.

Building on this natural use of Minecraft in the classroom, we are excited to share today that together with Code.org, we are bringing a Minecraft-inspired coding tutorial to students and educators, created especially for Hour of Code, an annual, global campaign held during Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 7-13. Hour of Code features a variety of one-hour introductory learn-to-code experiences, with the goal of demystifying code and encouraging more students to learn the basics of computer science.

Created by Minecraft game designers, the tutorial includes characters and challenges inspired by the Minecraft game developed by Mojang and familiar to Minecraft players around the world.

Players will interact with Minecraft characters Steve and Alex in 14 Minecraft-inspired, self-guided challenges, but players are also encouraged to participate in free play time and explore concepts learned through the tutorial. At its core, the experience will be familiar to current players, but also approachable for newcomers interested in learning the basics of coding.

Check it out today at https://www.code.org/mc, and learn more about Minecraft’s use in education at http://education.minecraft.net.