Just when you thought Minecraft couldn’t get any bigger, with ports on just about every platform under the sun, Microsoft and Mojang announced a new program designed to bring Minecraft into classrooms and computer labs around the globe.
Inspired by the success of MinecraftEdu, a modified Minecraft release designed for educators now owned by Microsoft, Mojang is going all-in on the Minecraft-as-teaching-tool concept. In Minecraft: Education Edition, up to 40 students can group together on a server to receive instruction and/or work through whatever tasks their instructor has provided. Teachers will be able to share their lesson plans with one another, or download existing plans from the Minecraft: Education Edition site, making it easy for those new to Minecraft to integrate the game into their lesson plans.
“MinecraftEdu is a modified version of Minecraft developed for schools and sold by a company called TeacherGaming. Minecraft: Education Edition builds on the early learnings from MinecraftEdu, while growing and expanding its feature set,” says Mojang. "We also added new features including login and personalization, the student portfolio feature, a second screen experience for teachers, and the ability to save student progress.”
As you might expect, given its educational focus, Minecraft: Education Edition won’t be available to the general public. Microsoft says Minecraft: Education Edition available to nationally recognized home schools, libraries, museums and traditional schools. Additional requirements are also listed on the Minecraft: Education Edition FAQ published this week. While regular Joes won’t be able to purchase MEE, Mojang says anyone can use the standard retail version of Minecraft in tandem with the course work being shared at education.minecraft.net.
Minecraft: Education Edition is being developed for PC. The specialized version of Mojang’s smash-hit sandbox game is scheduled to debut sometime this summer.
