Minecraft: Education Edition - A Comprehensive Guide for Educators
Minecraft: Education Edition is a game-based learning platform designed to inspire creative and inclusive learning through play. It allows students to develop essential skills such as collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, and digital citizenship. This version of Minecraft is built with teaching and learning in mind, offering educators special features and a vast library of lessons to engage students in a fun and interactive way.
Key Features and Benefits
Minecraft: Education Edition offers a range of features tailored for educational use:
Classroom Management Tools: These tools enable teachers to effectively manage their virtual classroom, monitor student progress, and facilitate communication.
Secure Sign-in: The platform uses secure sign-in methods, ensuring a safe and controlled environment for students. Office 365 handles the login process, eliminating the need for a separate server.
Classroom Collaboration: Up to thirty students can collaborate in a single world, fostering teamwork and communication skills. This collaborative environment allows students to build projects and solve problems together. Educators have told us that one of the greatest benefits of Minecraft Education is the ability for students to collaborate together to build projects and solve problems. An entire classroom of up to thirty (30) students can play in a world together with no separate server setup required.
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Extensive Lesson Library: With hundreds of ready-to-teach lessons, creative challenges, and blank canvas worlds, Minecraft: Education Edition provides numerous ways to integrate the game into various subjects. The lessons - more than 600 of them - are designed to encourage collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and more. These online, gamified lessons engage students in learning in a way that is fun and interactive.
Learn to Code - Code Builder: Code Builder is a feature in Minecraft that allows students to learn coding using tools including Code.org, Tynker, Scratch and Microsoft MakeCode. Students can use blocks of code or JavaScript to build and create in Minecraft.
Classroom Mode: Classroom Mode is a companion app for Minecraft: Education Edition that shows a high-level map view of the world, a list of all the students, the ability for a teacher to teleport students, and a chat window to communicate.
Special Blocks: Minecraft Education includes blocks not currently found in other editions of Minecraft designed especially for educators and world creators. Special blocks allow you to control the world you have set up for a lesson.
Cameras, Portfolio, and Writable Books: An important aspect of teaching with Minecraft is being able to collect evidence of learning in the game, and being able to track student progression.
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Chalkboards: Creators can use chalkboards to communicate learning goals, provide additional information and give explicit instructions within the game.
Teacher Permissions: Teachers are able to join worlds with operator permissions.
Curriculum Integration
Minecraft: Education Edition can be integrated into various subjects, including reading, math, history, and coding. It offers standardized curriculum and lessons designed for all types of learners.
STEM Education: The platform sparks a passion for STEM by providing immersive content created with partners like BBC Earth and NASA.
Literacy and Language Arts: Students can retell stories in virtual worlds, design new fairy tale endings, and explore historical structures. Retell a well known story in a virtual world and change the ending. Redefinition: Students have complete autonomy to change the course of a classic fairytale by designing a virtual 3D world that walks users through a new fairy tale ending.
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Mathematics: Minecraft can be used to calculate area formulae through design, learn fractions through gardening, and design tessellating patterns. Calculate and concretely learn area formulae through design of structures. Learn fractions through gardening. Design and create tessellating patterns.
History and Social Studies: Students can rebuild ancient civilizations, explore historical structures like the Roman Colosseum or Globe Theatre, and journey through time to meet leaders of social justice movements. Rebuild an ancient civilization. Take one of the pre-replicated historical structures (e.g., Roman Colosseum; Globe Theatre, London) and explore and/or renovate it. You can even “journey through time with Congressman John Lewis to meet leaders of social justice movements who were catalysts for Good Trouble and positive change” (Minecraft Education Edition Good Trouble, 2020, para.
Developing Essential Skills
Minecraft: Education Edition helps learners develop key skills that are crucial for their future success:
Problem-Solving: Students encounter challenges within the game that require them to think critically and find creative solutions.
Collaboration: The platform encourages teamwork and communication as students work together on projects and solve problems.
Digital Citizenship: Students learn to navigate the digital world responsibly and ethically.
Critical Thinking: Minecraft promotes critical thinking by requiring students to analyze situations, evaluate information, and make informed decisions.
Implementation and Management
Implementing Minecraft: Education Edition requires careful planning and management:
Technical Requirements: Minecraft: Education Edition requires Windows 10 and licenses for the machines running the game. We recommend checking this list of supported platforms for Minecraft Education to make sure the application is compatible with your device.
IT Management: With the new version, Office 365 handles the login process, so a separate server is no longer necessary. IT Admins can visit the Microsoft 365 roadmap for information about upcoming releases.
Teacher Training: Providing teachers with training is essential to ensure they can effectively use the platform. At Lufkin ISD, Davis holds collaborative learning events where students help teachers learn to play the game. Despite the ease-of-use improvements, Davis recommends providing teachers with training.
Licensing: Qualified educational organizations can purchase Minecraft Education through Volume Licensing or individual subscriptions. Qualified educational organizations can purchase Minecraft Education through Volume Licensing. School administrators at qualified educational organizations can purchase individual subscriptions for their schools. We recommend checking with your IT department before purchasing. Individual licenses can be purchased for use in camps, clubs, and other organizations.
Accessibility and Privacy
Microsoft is committed to the security of data and the accessibility of services.
Accessibility Features: The accessibility features in Minecraft Education include text-to-speech to help read menu items aloud, text-to-speech for the chat commands, and a User Interface (UI) screen reader.
Privacy Policy: Minecraft Education is a Microsoft product and is therefore included under Microsoft’s Privacy Policy. Microsoft collects personal data, but users may choose to opt-out of some settings. The privacy policy clearly states how the information is used or shared.
Getting Started
To get started with Minecraft: Education Edition:
Learn the Basics: Go through the Tutorial World to master the basics of the game. To learn how to use Minecraft Education, go through the Tutorial World and master the basics.
Join the Community: Join the global community of passionate educators to discover the power of Minecraft Education in your classroom. Learn to teach with Minecraft, find activities to engage your students across subjects and join our global community.
Minecraft Education Features Available
The following table lists the major Minecraft Education features available. Certain caveats apply. This table may change without notice.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Single Sign On (SSO) | SSO like networks, works differently and is implemented differently at schools depending on the service they're using. SSO is available for Minecraft Education if the user is logging into their domain joined device with the same Office 365 Education credentials they use to login to the game. |
| Classroom Mode | Classroom Mode is a companion app for Minecraft Education that shows a high-level map view of the world, a list of all the students, the ability for a teacher to teleport students, and a chat window to communicate. |
| Code Builder | Code Builder is the in game coding experience that was launched with our 1.7 release. |
| Easy Classroom Collaboration | Educators have told us that one of the greatest benefits of Minecraft Education is the ability for students to collaborate together to build projects and solve problems. An entire classroom of up to thirty (30) students can play in a world together with no separate server setup required. |
| Special Blocks | Minecraft Education includes blocks not currently found in other editions of Minecraft designed especially for educators and world creators. Special blocks allow you to control the world you have set up for a lesson. |
| Cameras, Portfolio | An important aspect of teaching with Minecraft is being able to collect evidence of learning in the game, and being able to track student progression. |
| Chalkboards | Creators can use chalkboards to communicate learning goals, provide additional information and give explicit instructions within the game. |
| Lessons | Full lessons for educators to use in their classroom. |
| Teacher permissions | Teachers are able to join worlds with operator permissions. |
tags: #minecraft #education #edition #features
