Minecraft Education

Minecraft: Education Edition is an educational version of Minecraft specifically designed for classroom use. It is being developed by Mojang AB and Microsoft Studios and contains features that make Minecraft easy to use in a classroom setting. The full game was released on November 1, 2016. There was a beta test between June 9 and November 1, 2016.

Features
The Education Edition is based off the Pocket Edition and contains features that make Minecraft more accessible and effective in a classroom setting, including:
 * Easy Classroom Collaboration: Educators have told us that one of the greatest benefits of Minecraft: Education Edition is the ability for students to collaborate together to build projects and solve problems. An entire classroom of up to 30 students can play in a world together with no separate server setup required.  Or students can work together in pairs or groups simply by joining their classmates’ world.
 * Non-Player Characters: An educator may create an NPC (Non-Player Character) to act as a guide for students in the game, giving instruction, providing more information, and also allowing educators to insert an active web link to additional references.
 * Camera + 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. The camera and portfolio features allows students to take screenshots of their work and document the development of their projects.
 * Chalkboards: Creators can use chalkboards to communicate learning goals, provide additional information and give explicit instructions within the game.  Chalkboards come in three different sizes – Slate (1×1), Poster (2×1), and Board (2×3).
 * Simple, Secure sign-in: Individual student and teacher logins with Office 365 Education accounts ensure data privacy & security while playing Minecraft: Education Edition.
 * Tutorial World: For educators or students new to Minecraft, a tutorial world is available that will guide players on in-game navigation, crafting, and placing or breaking blocks.
 * Allow & Deny blocks: These blocks allow the educator (or a player with WorldBuilder privileges) to place specific areas where players can or cannot build.
 * Border blocks: These blocks prevent players from entering or leaving a specific area. The range of influence extends the full range of the Y coordinate from wherever the block is placed on the X & Z coordinate. It is the same shape as a cobblestone wall but with a smooth, red texture and red particle effects.
 * Classroom Mode: This is a complimentary program to Education Edition and allows educators a master view of the map (including the locations of all players), communicate with players via chat (and monitor the chat), and turn off/on some world settings.
 * Additional item hotbar: There is a smaller hotbar with three additional slots that can be enabled for players by the educator. This smaller hotbar rests to the right-side of the main hotbar and educators can populate this hotbar with items.

Lesson plans
Lesson plans through the Education Edition are available to download and are split between certain age groups and various subjects such as history, visual arts, and gaming. Additionally, educators can upload lesson plans that they have created for others to use from the main website.

Pricing
The full game costs $5 per user per year to use, depending on school size and if qualifications for volume licensing are met. Volume pricing for school-wide deployments and large-scale academic institutions are also planned. Schools and districts who already have MinecraftEdu will be able to get the Education Edition for free.

Eligibility
In order to be eligible to purchase the Education Edition, you must meet the following requirements (as seen on Tech Specs):


 * An eligible educator must be a full-time or part-time faculty or staff member at an academic institution and have a school-specific email address provided by the school that can receive external email.
 * An eligible district or school must be a qualified education user, defined as an accredited institution organized and operated exclusively for the purpose of teaching its enrolled students.
 * An eligible public library must provide general library services without charge to all residents of a given community, district, or region.
 * An eligible public museum must be an agency or institution organized on a permanent basis for essentially education or aesthetic purposes, and utilize a professional staff to exhibit tangible objects to the public on a regular basis.
 * Finally, an eligible home-school program must provide K-12 education to a student or students with written proof that it either belongs to a nationally-recognized home-schooling organization or is expressly recognized by a local school district as an acceptable alternative to an accredited or state-recognized/approved educational institution.

System requirements
Minimum system requirements (according to Tech Specs):

Windows 10

 * 1 GHz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
 * 1 GB RAM or 2 GB RAM
 * 16 GB available hard disk space or 20 GB
 * DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Mac OSX El Capitan

 * 2 GB RAM
 * 8.8 GB available hard disk space
 * All Mac models as listed here

Additionally, an Office 365 account is required to log into Education Edition.