Educators interested in trying the experience for free before buying can still try the early access version of Minecraft: Education Edition. Those new to using Minecraft in the classroom can also check out education.minecraft.net, which includes lesson plans and a new Minecraft Mentors program that connects educators with others experienced in teaching with Minecraft.
Since June, more than 15,000 students and educators around the world have experienced the programme and provided feedback to help Microsoft fine-tune the experience across a diverse set of learning environments. There are now several new key features that the community reported are important for enhancing the learning environment, including:
· Classroom Mode: a companion app for Minecraft: Education Edition that shows a map view of the Minecraft world, a list of all the students in the world, the ability for a teacher to teleport students and a chat window to communicate with students and grant resources. Classroom Mode is provided for educators who may want to observe student activity without being in the game.
· New Minecraft game features: Microsoft will continue to update Minecraft: Education Edition to include new game features from other editions of Minecraft. All the latest updates to Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition beta will be included, such as an updated user interface, leads and horses, additional player skins, and pistons and the remainder of Redstone functionality.
