How homeschooling boosted the educational version of the game "Minecraft"

A week that the children have returned to school.

In the binder, next to the pencil case and notebooks, some may have slipped a new tool:

.

With 120 million players worldwide, it is one of the most popular video games since its release in 2011. Since 2016, there is an educational version,

, with content created for schools.

Version which has experienced a real craze since confinement, with, according to figures collected by Europe 1, 2.6 million educational content downloaded within the software.

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View lessons in a game

Minecraft

is a "sandbox" game, in other words a game where you can do everything and above all, build everything, which has become famous for its very pixelated design, like the games of the 1990s. The educational version uses these endless possibilities to illustrate the school program with lessons made available to teachers.

Maths, sciences, history, code, music or even physics-chemistry: everything is possible with 

.

"At the beginning, the students say to themselves that they are going to play. But after a few minutes, they understand that it remains a course. It's a software like any other", assures David Plumel, professor of techno at the college of Saint-Pierre -le-Moûtier, in the Nièvre.

He uses

with his 5th year students for an introduction to architecture.

"In the space of an hour of time, the pupils are able to build a house. It goes much faster than with software dedicated to architecture", explains David Plumel.

The pupils thus use the computers of the college to practice.

"We won't all make them architects, but at least they have an idea of ​​what a surface is, of what 10 or 100 square meters represents. And above all, with the view in the third person, it allows you to project into space. "

A tool suitable for home schooling

David Plumel has been using 

for three years for his lessons and, in addition to his field, he is developing a project with his colleague, a plastic arts teacher.

He is satisfied with the basic game but in the

version 

, content is added regularly: a walk with endangered animals, materialized fractions to facilitate understanding ... NASA engineers have even reproduced there the ISS, the International Space Station!

And during the confinement, the developers have adapted the software so that it can be used at home by the students affected by the confinement, allowing free access from any computer.

As a result, the number of connections to

has increased by 50% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We realized that

adapts just as well to a classroom as to a school at home," Deirdre Quarnstrom, software manager, told Europe 1.

"In my opinion, this kind of tool, which is both fun and participatory, is very interesting given the current transformations in education."

With 2.6 million content downloaded since March, France has therefore experienced a clear resurgence of interest in

.

But the tool is still used marginally by teachers.

And we are still very far from countries like Australia or Sweden, where

is included directly in school programs.