US Department of Education Spending $4 Million To Teach 3,450 Kids CS Using Minecraft

theodp writes: Among the 45 winners of this year's Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program competitions is Creative Coders: Middle School CS Pathways Through Game Design (PDF). The U.S. Dept. of Education is providing the national nonprofit Urban Arts with $3,999,988 to 'use materials and learning from its School of Interactive Arts program to create an engaging, game-based, middle school CS course using [Microsoft] Minecraft tools' for 3,450 middle schoolers (6th-8th grades) in New York and California with the help of 'our industry partner Microsoft with the utilization of Minecraft Education.'

From Urban Arts' winning proposal: 'Because a large majority of children play video games regularly, teaching CS through video game design exemplifies CRT [Culturally Responsive Teaching], which has been linked to 'academic achievement, improved attendance, [and] greater interest in school.' The video game Minecraft has over 173 million users worldwide and is extremely popular with students at the middle school level; the Minecraft Education workspace we utilize in the Creative Coders curriculum is a familiar platform to any player of the original game. By leveraging students' personal interests and their existing 'funds of knowledge', we believe Creative Coders is likely to increase student participation and engagement.'

Speaking of UA's EIR grant partner Microsoft, Urban Arts' Board of Directors includes Josh Reynolds, the Director of Modern Workplace for Microsoft Education, whose Urban Arts bio notes 'has led some of the largest game-based learning activations worldwide with Minecraft.' Urban Arts' Gaming Pathways Educational Advisory Board includes Reynolds and Microsoft Sr. Account Executive Amy Brandt. And in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith cited $50 million K-12 CS pledges made to Ivanka Trump by Microsoft and other Tech Giants as the key to getting Donald Trump to sign a $1 billion, five-year presidential order (PDF) 'to ensure that federal funding from the Department of Education helps advance [K-12] computer science,' including via EIR program grants.

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