Top 5 things to know about Minecraft Education Edition

Minecraft Education Edition is an educational version of Minecraft that is specifically designed for classroom use and contains features that make Minecraft easy to use. It uses Bedrock Edition and is available on platforms such as iPads, Chromebooks and Windows.

Education Edition is an excellent way to support virtual learning experiences that directly link to and expand on the subjects that are normally taught in classrooms, as well as preparing students for future workplaces by expanding their creativity, problem solving and critical thinking.

Listed below are 5 things to know about Minecraft Education Edition.

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Minecraft Education Edition

#5 - Classroom Mode

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Classroom Mode is a companion application for Education Edition and can be used to access a range of features specially designed to interact with students while hosting a multiplayer game. The instructors are able to control things such as pausing the game, turning off chat, amongst many other things.

They are also able to see the player roster and the world map, which is only available to the instructors.

#4 - Lesson Plans

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On the Minecraft Education Edition website, educators are able to access a library that is full of hundreds of lesson plans in subjects such as Language Arts, Computer Science, Math, Art & Design and History.

Many of these lessons have supplementary, pre-made Minecraft worlds, so that students can apply their learning in-game. In the library, the lesson plans are split between certain age groups as well. Additionally, educators can upload their own lesson plans so that others can use them.

#3 - Chemistry

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Within this edition of Minecraft, there is a Chemistry resource pack. With this resource pack, learners are able to discover the building blocks of matter, combine elements into useful compounds and fun in-game items, and conduct amazing virtual science experiments.

Things that are available to learners include element constructors, compound creators, lab tables and material reducers!

#2 - Code Builder and the Agent

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In Minecraft Education Edition, there is a feature called Minecraft Agent which works as a student's in-game coding companion. Students can use this to learn how to write code and expand their coding knowledge. They will also learn how to command the Agent through coding.

This is very useful for young students who might be into coding, whether it be for video games or for an actual coding company.

#1 - Education-Specific Game Features

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Minecraft Education Edition comes with a ton of features that are not available in vanilla Minecraft. This includes tools such as cameras, portfolios, books and quills that allow players to capture learning, write stories and export their observations to share with other students or with their instructor.

It also includes chalkboards, which instructors can use to communicate learning goals, and provide additional information and give explicit instructions within Minecraft.