Notes

'Minecraft: Education Edition' The Game will be Available In Early Access

A new version of Minecraft developed for the classroom is now available in early access. Minecraft Education Edition was released in January with Microsoft's acquisition of MinecraftEdu which is a team that has been developing the game for teachers. The replacement is available for free this summer, before a per-student pricing system is launched for the academic year. As a small thank you, Microsoft has promised existing MinecraftEdu customers a year of free access to Education Edition -- presumably it will be available when the early access trial wraps up.



The Education Edition of Minecraft has certain advantages over the vanilla version. Up to 30 students can learn together in one place. This eliminates the need for a private server via a service such as Minecraft Realms. To provide a more supervised experience for students, teachers can create a non-player characters (NPC) and provide them with links to access additional resources. Also, there's a chalkboard for displaying instructions and cameras that students can use to snap snapshots of their work, creating an in-game portfolio along the way.



Microsoft claims that it is still working on many other features that have been requested by the community. The new interface provides teachers with a map with markers for each student, the ability to teleport users (should anyone accidentally wander off or get lost) and a chat area to manage private and class-wide conversations. Minecraft has already proven itself to be a highly effective educational tool, teaching geoscience, art, and coding. Now that it has an official version for schools its possibilities and its successes are likely to increase.
Benga Wan

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