theodp writes: Among the many 45 winners of this yr’s Schooling Innovation and Analysis (EIR) program competitions is Inventive Coders: Center College CS Pathways Via Recreation Design (PDF). The U.S. Dept. of Schooling is offering the nationwide nonprofit City Arts with $3,999,988 to “use supplies and studying from its College of Interactive Arts program to create an interesting, game-based, center college CS course utilizing [Microsoft] Minecraft instruments” for 3,450 center schoolers (Sixth-Eighth grades) in New York and California with the assistance of “our business associate Microsoft with the utilization of Minecraft Schooling.”
From City Arts’ profitable proposal: “As a result of a big majority of kids play video video games repeatedly, educating CS via online game design exemplifies CRT [Culturally Responsive Teaching], which has been linked to ‘tutorial achievement, improved attendance, [and] better curiosity at school.’ The online game Minecraft has over 173 million customers worldwide and is extraordinarily widespread with college students on the center college stage; the Minecraft Schooling workspace we make the most of within the Inventive Coders curriculum is a well-known platform to any participant of the unique recreation. By leveraging college students’ private pursuits and their present ‘funds of data’, we consider Inventive Coders is prone to improve scholar participation and engagement.”
Talking of UA’s EIR grant associate Microsoft, City Arts’ Board of Administrators consists of Josh Reynolds, the Director of Trendy Office for Microsoft Schooling, whose City Arts bio notes “has led among the largest game-based studying activations worldwide with Minecraft.” City Arts’ Gaming Pathways Instructional Advisory Board consists of Reynolds and Microsoft Sr. Account Govt Amy Brandt. And in his 2019 ebook Instruments and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith cited $50 million Okay-12 CS pledges made to Ivanka Trump by Microsoft and different Tech Giants as the important thing to getting Donald Trump to signal a $1 billion, five-year presidential order (PDF) “to make sure that federal funding from the Division of Schooling helps advance [K-12] laptop science,” together with by way of EIR program grants.