Minecraft Education Edition comes to classrooms

Teachers are getting the building blocks they need to lead lessons in Minecraft worlds as Microsoft launches Minecraft Education Edition.

Sometimes the push to bring tech into the classroom seems like a misguided distraction from the Three Rs, but I appreciate that anything which helps engage children is generally a good thing. Just like a box of wooden building blocks, Minecraft in the classroom can be a distracting toy or a powerful learning tool depending on how you use it.

Schools have been using Minecraft in the classroom for several years but effectively managing a gaggle of students in the standard game requires a level of command line Kung Fu which might be beyond some teachers. Minecraft Education Edition has been in beta for several months, after Microsoft purchased MinecraftEdu, and its official launch aims to simplify a lot of those administrative tasks as well as adding a few new tricks.

Education Edition offers tools which make it much easier for teachers to alter a Minecraft world's settings, send messages to students, teleport them to different locations and issue them with resources. You could already do these things if you had OP rights to access the command line, along with a grasp of Minecraft server commands, but with Education Edition the teacher can spend less time managing the world and more time focusing on the lesson plan.

The teacher can also create extra non-player characters, controlled by the computer, to guide students through the world and provide them with extra information so they're less reliant on the teacher for simple tasks. Everyone also has access to a virtual chalkboard along with an in-game camera so students can document their work and add it to their portfolio.

Education Edition also makes it easier to manage a classroom of Minecraft accounts, although Microsoft charges $5 per student per year and requires an Office 365 Education license. Minecraft Education Edition isn't available to the general public, it's only open to schools, libraries, museums and participants in nationally recognised home-school organisations.

Some people might dismiss Minecraft in the classroom as a fad, as games are always rising and falling in popularity, but it's rather short-sighted to view Minecraft as simply a "game". Think of it more like an "environment" which can be whatever you want it to be, just like the school's sandpit or a huge box of Lego. Sandpits and building blocks never go out of fashion, new generations of children continue to embrace them because they engage their imagination and open up a world of possibilities.

Of course, just like building blocks, the effectiveness of Minecraft in the classroom depends on what you do with it. Microsoft offers a range of tutorials and lesson plans aimed at different age groups, but it remains to be seen how Microsoft will support this in the long-term and whether third-party services will embrace Education Edition and contribute to the ecosystem of lesson plans and classroom-friendly Minecraft worlds.

How would you put Minecraft to work in the classroom?