"Minecraft: Education Edition" is expanding their curriculum and courses with the addition of the new Chemistry Update.
Formally announced on their official blog, Mojang promises that the Chemistry Update will give educators the tools to teach their students chemistry in a fun and accessible way through the world of "Minecraft."
According to the team's research, only 50 percent of U.S. schools offer hands-on science on a weekly basis due to lack of equipment and proper supplies. They promote that the Chemistry Update will enable teachers and students to explore the chemical field without having to pay the high cost for tools and materials.
The Chemistry Update will feature a new "Minecraft" world that can serve as a starting template for teachers to use. This world contains a hands-on tutorial for all the new features included in the update as well as various experiments and stations that students can interact with.
This update will also include several new mechanics and features to help immerse students in the field of chemistry.
The Element Constructor simulates, creating elements based on their atomic structure with sliders to adjust the number of protons, electrons, and neutrons. It will allow students to create 118 different elements from the periodic table as well as over 400 isotopes.
These created elements can then be brought into the Compound Creator which, as the name implies, will let students combine the different elements to make new compounds. There are over 30 available compounds so far.
Minecraft Education Director Neal Manegold stated that one of the main motivations for the Chemistry Update is to further promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to the students.
"Bringing chemistry to Minecraft not only helps spark interest in STEM, but also helps educators engage students in the scientific process, reinforcing creative problem solving and engaging experiments," he said.
As it stands, "Minecraft: Education Edition" already has various modules and lesson plans that help facilitate learning of different topics, many of which were created by educators within the "Minecraft" community. From programming and computer science to history and economics, there is no shortage of topics. The addition of this new update will only serve to open up more doors for community created lessons using the new tools introduced.
