The Microsoft Education blog recently posted about their new Minecraft Hour of Code release:
"As part of Microsoft’s continued commitment to empower students with these skills, we’ve partnered with Code.org for the past two years to offer educators and students a free Hour of Code tutorial using Minecraft. The results are far beyond anything we could have imagined.
To date, nearly 70 million Minecraft Hour of Code sessions have introduced the basics of coding to people around the world, joining the global movement. Today, I’m excited to announce that we have built a new Minecraft Hour of Code tutorial called Minecraft: Hero’s Journey.
Available at Code.org/Minecraft today, Hero’s Journey introduces a fun character called the Agent and 12 new challenges that teach core coding concepts like loops, debugging, and functions. It’s free and playable across iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Upon completing the tutorial, students can import their code into Minecraft: Education Edition for the first time ever, bringing their work to life in the game, or share their work via email, text message or social media"
It's always incredible to see Phaser used to create games and apps that help teach people new skills, as well as just having fun. And they don't come much bigger than this! 70 million sessions is an incredible number and I can only hope this helps empower more junior developers to think "I can do this" and to start creating.