Minecraft: Education Edition to launch in November

Microsoft has announced that the full version of Minecraft: Education Edition will launch on 1 November. Teaching professionals who are interested in trying the experience for free can still try out the early access version until the official launch date.

Minecraft: Education Edition, like the core game, is an open world experience that promotes creativity, collaboration, and problem solving.

Early access to the tool launched in June of this year, and to date more than 15,000 students and teaching professionals have experienced the programme and provided feedback. With the launch of the full edition some key features will become available for the first time, including:

• Classroom Mode: A companion app for Minecraft: Education Edition that shows a map view of the Minecraftworld, with a list of all the students in that world, as well as the ability for a teacher to teleport students, and a chat window to communicate with and grant resources to students. Classroom mode is provided for teachers who may want to observe student activity without being in the game.
• New Minecraft game features: Continual updates will be provided to Minecraft: Education Edition to include new game features from other editions of Minecraft. All the latest updates to Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition beta will be included, such as the updated user interface, leads and horses, additional player skins as well as pistons and all redstone functionality.

Full details about the tool and how it can be used in classrooms is available on its website, education.minecraft.net,