Microsoft has announced that the full version of Minecraft: Education Edition will be available to purchase from November 1.
Minecraft: Education Edition, of course, is geared to be used as an educational tool for students and teachers alike. More than 15,000 students and educators around the world have experienced the app since June, with a good chunk of those providing feedback to help fine-tune the experience.
Features included in Minecraft: Education Edition include:
- 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: We 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.
Those who are interested in trying the experience for free can try out Minecraft: Education Edition’s early access portion before November 1.