Launching this summer, Minecraft: Education Edition will be an “expanded” version of Minecraft for classrooms, distributed to educational institutions worldwide. Based on the already existing MinecraftEdu program—a modded version of Minecraft, used for teaching, which Microsoft has acquired—this new edition wants to help things along by launching a community site that, as the announcement from Mojang puts it, will “host lesson plans and give Minecraft: Education Edition users somewhere to discuss ideas and provide feedback.” According to the new site’s FAQ, what the developers are actually doing with the Education Edition is “growing and expanding” MinecraftEdu’s features—there’s a list of changes showing exactly what will be different compared to the game’s regular version: It’s multiplayer Minecraft with an educational twist, basically, where you can play together with your class on a Minecraft server and learn about (or teach) all kinds of subjects—as the FAQ puts it, “from math and physics to history and language arts.” Sounds more fun than the classes I’m used to, at least. Microsoft plans to launch Minecraft: Education Edition for schools, libraries, and museums this summer at a price of $5 per user per year. Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.
Microsoft are to launch an " education edition " of Minecraft that will offer teachers new ways to use the popular world - building video game in a range of subjects . Microsoft paid £ 2.5bn for the developer of Minecraft , Mojang , last year and bought the 4-year old MinecraftEdu version of the game from Finland - based independent developer , TeacherGaming , and now promises to add features , however , they will face extra costs . Over 7,000 schools already use Minecraft in some form , however , Microsoft says that once they make the game easier for schools they predict the number of classrooms will significantly grow . At the same time , it will also help Microsoft promote its word processing , email and file - sharing apps over rival services from Google and others .