We’re sure you’re prepped and ready for the big lockdown. The trick will be keeping busy while it’s on. Adults have options — there are books and movies and games. What are the kids going to do while you’re busy entertaining yourself? Something educational, hopefully. Microsoft and Minecraft have the answer to that.

Learn something

Minecraft: Education Edition does exactly what it says — it uses the magic of Minecraft to teach kids something new about the world. And there are an awful lot of kids at home right now. They need them some schoolin’.

To that end, Microsoft has made a brand new category in the Minecraft Marketplace (an also-magical world where real money is turned into added content for Minecraft). The category is Education and the content is… well, it’s free for now. Because we’re all stuck at home and kids are hard to entertain without messing their brains up.

Some of the content available includes the inside of the International Space Station (ISS), an exploration of Greek history, a guide to how the human eye works, and a few more things besides. The point is to be educational without seeming educational. And the removal of pricing? That’s because loads of folks need educational content right now but paying for it seems rather… silly.

It’s not free for good, though. The newly-free content on the Minecraft Marketplace will remain free until 30 June this year — by which time hopefully all this lockdown stuff will have passed into history.

Source: Minecraft.net