MinecraftEdu

MinecraftEdu is a sandbox indie educational video game written in Java, developed by TeacherGaming, published by E-Line Media, and licensed by Mojang AB. It is meant as an educational version of Minecraft for classroom use. In the beginning, MinecraftEdu was developed by TeacherGaming which were three developers and three teachers, located in the United States and Finland. Later, TeacherGaming expanded into a team of eight.

MinecraftEdu focuses on allowing the player to explore, interact with, and modify a dynamically-generated map made of one-cubic-meter-sized blocks. In doing so the student with the help of the teacher is supposed to learn a variety of subjects. The teacher can change settings to defy where students can place/destroy blocks and the world used on the server.

On January 19, 2016, Microsoft announced that they would be acquiring MinecraftEdu from TeacherGaming. At the same time, a new educational version of the game was announced: Minecraft: Education Edition has since launched to schools around the world.

Purchase and avaibility
MinecraftEdu can be purchased for $18 per student (24 or less) or $14 (25 or more) for the User license and $41 for the server license. The server license can be bought as a one-time purchase. Once purchased, the game can be played by downloading the launcher. MinecraftEdu Hosting Beta is also available for $20/month and does not require you to pay the server software license again.

Hardware requirements
According to http://minecraftedu.com/faq#question_2-13 and https://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/325948-minecraft-system-requirements:

Minimum Requirements:
 * A Windows, Mac or Linux computer (desktop or laptop)
 * 2 GB of RAM or greater
 * Intel Pentium D, AMD Athlon or greater processor
 * 200MB free hard disk space or more
 * Java 6 Release 45 or later (including Java 7 and 8)

Recommended Requirements:
 * CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD Athlon II (K10) 2.8 GHz
 * RAM: 4GB
 * GPU: GeForce 2xx Series or AMD Radeon HD 5xxx Series (Excluding Integrated Chipsets) with OpenGL 3.3
 * HDD: 1GB
 * Latest release of Java 8 from java.com

Software Requirements:
 * Minecraft Release 1.6 or newer. Older versions will need to be updated to current versions
 * Please note that some users experience issues playing Minecraft while using a mismatched version of Java for their operating system (32 or 64 bit), while using certain versions of Java 7, or while multiple versions of Java are installed.

Discontinuation
As of April 5, 2016, MinecraftEdu is no longer for sale. However, customers that have already purchased MinecraftEdu licenses may continue to use MinecraftEdu. Since then, MinecraftEdu no longer receives new updates from TeacherGaming, and Microsoft will not be supporting MinecraftEdu. However, worlds built in MinecraftEdu will not port over to Minecraft: Education Edition.

Gameplay
The objective of the game remains the same as regular Minecraft, where players can build virtual realities in a sandbox-like environment. However, MinecraftEdu also has the goal of an educational use to teach a variety of subjects.

Differences from regular Minecraft
MinecraftEdu differs from the regular version in a variety of ways, such as a tutorial mode, teacher options and exclusive Blocks/items.

Blocks/Items

 * Blocks


 * Items

Teacher options
(Can open by pressing )
 * User settings


 * General


 * World


 * Give


 * Assignment

Tutorial mode

 * MinecraftEdu comes with a tutorial world that teachers may select from the server menu, that goes through the basics of controls, placing/destroying blocks, teacher options, and more.

Mods

 * Forge
 * MinecraftEdu comes prepackaged with Minecraft Forge for easy mod installation.


 * ComputerCraftEdu
 * ComputerCraftEdu come prepackaged with MinecraftEdu and is an educational version of ComputerCraft made by TeacherGaming and Dan200(Author of ComputerCraft), meant to teach students how to code inside of Minecraft.

Skins

 * Instead of having customizable skins, the student picks their skin from one of the many default skins that come with MinecraftEdu (in addition to Steve and Alex) when first joining a server or creating a world.