Enter Vast Virtual Museums in Minecraft

Who doesn’t love a good museum? When you walk through the front doors, you’re immediately transported into a world packed with wonder and the potential for discovery. Plenty of learners ignite lifelong passions on trips to museums, and some of them will end up basing their careers on those experiences!

On International Museum Day, we’re celebrating these vital institutions by releasing new worlds and lessons for Minecraft: Education Edition. Students will be able to wander through virtual re-creations of two real-world museums. They can also use the cavernous interior of an empty museum to create their own museum, filling it with artifacts on any topic they choose—from dinosaurs to digital characters. Take a look at the worlds your learners can explore.

The Washington State History Museum

Enter this epic virtual museum to research three eras in Washington State’s history, explore important events, and design new exhibits by adding artifacts and signage to empty rooms. As guest curators, students can also build their own exhibits based on their current time period. The Washington State History Museum world supports three separate lessons.

Lesson 1: Take a tour of the state symbols outside the museum. Read about each one and decide on a new state symbol to add.

Lesson 2: There are three unfinished display sections. They’re waiting for artifacts, art, and signs to show the public important information about their particular era. Help design these new displays!

Lesson 3: Once students have completed their research into the three eras in Washington’s history, they have the chance to design a current-era display in the lobby of the museum by considering their own community as well as current events.

Create Your Own Museum

What have your students been learning lately? Whether it’s science, social studies, mathematics, arts, literacy, or any other subject area, it deserves a museum. These institutions are spaces that help visitors understand, appreciate, and explore a topic. Students can use this world as a template to create displays, exhibits, interactive galleries, signage, and everything else they’ll need to showcase their knowledge after a course of study. Learners can then take virtual field trips to each other’s in-game museums! Find the Create Your Own Museum lesson here.

Pacific Science Center

Tour this landmark campus and explore the exhibit halls, theaters, and courtyard, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes spaces necessary to keep an interactive science center working smoothly. While you’re there, you can dive deeper into exhibit content like astronomy, dinosaurs, butterflies, naked mole rats, human health, music, or basic physics. Enter the Pacific Science Center!

These worlds are a great way to get your artifact collectors, archive explorers, and knowledge communicators excited about museums. You might just have a future curator, historian, or educator in your classroom!

If you haven’t tried Minecraft: Education Edition and want to get started with these museum worlds, check your eligibility and download the game here.