Minecraft becomes a compulsory class for Swedish school

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 .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.