What is Minecraft Education Edition?
Minecraft has touched your child’s heart through fun, entertaining, and exciting games, but today, Minecraft: Education Edition can also enter your kid’s brain and intellect.
How?
A child who plays Minecraft: Education Edition can master coding, problem-solving, and even STEM-related subjects! Other than these, here is what you get if you let your child play Minecraft: Education Edition as part of the code learning for kids.
What is the difference between Minecraft games and Minecraft: Education Edition?
Minecraft has varieties of ultimately exciting games and mods. It offers a different environment where your child can enjoy. There are also available Youtube videos of Minecraft streams that captivated your kids. Whilst your child is playing Minecraft, they are familiarising tons of techniques, problem-solving tasks, and even building their crafts. It seems evident how your kid can expand their horizons through Minecraft games.
However, to make the game more intellectually suitable for your child, Minecraft created another interface called “Minecraft: Education Edition.” Its primary purpose is to specialise mainly in educating your child. Minecraft: Education Edition is separate from the original Minecraft, but it still carries some features that are recognisable to your kid.
So, is it vital to try Minecraft: Education Edition if it somehow brings the same quality from the original Minecraft? Well, let’s see first the other features and educational benefits of this edition.
What is Minecraft: Education Edition?
Minecraft: Education Edition is a platform for code learning inspired by the popular game Minecraft. Minecraft offers traditional games and free exploration, Minecraft: Education Edition highlights learning, practising, and teaching various skills.
Kids may try Minecraft: Education Edition to enhance their kids’ coding skills and other personal skills they might use for future careers. Other than that, they can also receive project-based learning games and tutorials that are both fun and educational.
Besides the mind-exercising tasks in this platform, Minecraft: Education Edition also offers colourful, creative, and exciting screen features that will surely thrill you to learn and see.
Why should my child try Minecraft: Education Edition?
If you want your child to spend their gadget time into a learning experience, then Minecraft: Education Edition is for them!
Instead of playing war games or any unhealthy applications through their gadgets, it is better to introduce a compelling and knowledgeable platform that will further improve their skills.
You will expect your child to learn coding for kids and even STEM skills such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is advantageous for them to excel through these subjects now to apply them in their school. There could be a surprise for you if you see your child get A+ grades on these subjects.
Other than that, your kid will learn how to solve problems on their own using this platform. Minecraft: Education Edition provided tasks that require problem-solving skills and decision makings. In this case, your child will practise doing and create things independently.
If you give them time to learn and enjoy the world of Minecraft, then you can also ask them to try Minecraft: Education Edition. It makes their screen time more informative and exciting while they gain practical skills in kids coding.
Besides these, Minecraft: Education Edition proudly reveals that this version has reached up to 115 countries! As these schools added Minecraft: Education Edition to their curriculum, many students get equipped with various benefits. Some of these advantages include the following.
Immersive STEM learning. Kids start to sharpen their 21st Century skills, making them ready for any projects and tasks at school or at home. Minecraft: Education Edition also helps them focus on project-based lessons instead of the traditional learning setup.
Classroom-friendly features. Due to the Minecraft: Education Edition, kids begin to enjoy collaborating with their classmates and instructors. It supports them to have an inductive learning experience including formative assessments.
Creativity and innovation. Minecraft: Education Edition carries independent designing, making, and developing games. So, it caters to help children improve their creativity and innovative skills. Other than that, this version also gives an opportunity to try storytelling, exploration, and digital learning.
Is Minecraft: Education Edition free?
Parents and teachers can use Minecraft: Education Edition for free. They can easily download it online with nothing much to expend. The free version is limited to a number of log-ins, particularly 10 for students and 25 for the teachers. If you exceeded these free features, then Minecraft now requires you to buy a paid license and continue playing.
You can enjoy Minecraft: Education Edition for about 5 US dollars per user every year. It enables you to enjoy all the features of the game with a limitless number of log-ins.
Where can I download it?
Minecraft: Education Edition is available to different platforms and operating systems. You can download it onto your Chromebooks. Other than that, Minecraft: Education Edition is available on Mac, iOS, and Windows. You can also log in using your Microsoft account or Google account log-ins.
After logging in, you access your saved projects through their accessibility to the previous data. Additionally, students who log in to the software can collaborate for about thirty accounts. Most importantly, you need to acquire a valid Office 365 EDU account to play this Education Edition.
How to launch Minecraft: Education Edition?
After downloading the Minecraft: Education Edition, you may now launch it on your computer. First, open the application and log in. Then, go directly to the main menu and select play. Afterwards, continue by clicking the tab “Create New.”
Once you clicked that tab, a list of worlds would appear on the screen. If no list is available, check your Minecraft: Education Edition version and update it. However, if lists are provided, just click any of the worlds.
Afterwards, click “Play” from this menu. Please do not change any settings to begin the game. As you enter the world, signs and friendly non-player characters will help you throughout the tutorial. Minecraft added them to guide beginner users in navigating Minecraft: Education Edition.
Here are some of the controls you can do using your keyboard.
W - move forward
S - move backward
A - turn left
D - turn right
Ctrl - sprint
Space - jump
Space + W - hop to the block
Space (while swimming) - hop to the surface / breathe
Space (in Creative mode) - fly; twice spaces to drop to the ground
Shift - crouch down or sneak
Shift (while flying) - fly downwards
Esc - goes back to the menu or back to the game
Q - drop materials or items you are carrying
E - open and close inventory
E (in Creative mode) - building blocks
C - check the Code Builder
T - open the chat window, followed by Return to send message
F1 - toggle the interface visibility or taking a screenshot
F5 - alter the user’s perspective
Here are some of the controls you can do using your mouse.
1 - attack the enemy or destroy items
2 - pick blocks or items
3 - use the item or place the block
You may use these keys to guide you whilst exploring Minecraft: Education Edition.
How to Play Minecraft: Education Edition?
Microsoft provided lessons and tutorials for teachers, students, and parents to begin playing Minecraft: Education Edition. They can try browsing this “starter kit” to see how the game works and how your child can navigate through the surface.
Other than that, you can also go first to the Survival mode before different modes. In the Survival mode, the player is in the training mode of hunting and foraging for food. It also guides the player in building structures, avoiding creatures, monsters, and other obstacle hazards. Of course, Minecraft: Education Edition also includes health bars, modes, and other player features.
After learning all the critical steps on Minecraft: Education Edition, you can start the Survival mode by building a shelter, gathering supplies, and making more blocks. Then, let your kid begin hunting, do basic movements through collecting and branching out.
If your child wants to try Creative Mode, it is the best way to grab the educational program. A unique feature of Creative Mode is that the player never dies. It means your child will not get frustrated while exploring the Minecraft world.
Most importantly, Minecraft: Education Edition teaches children on blocks, communication, code building, and execution of the codes. You can download its extra lesson plans to teach every child.
What are the features of Minecraft: Education Edition?
Minecraft: Education Edition is not very different from the original game. However, it still includes new qualities making it unique and extraordinary as a learning game for kids. Some of these newly added features are listed below.
Border blocks. Minecraft: Education Edition includes these blocks to guide players in staying within the corral. It also prevents players from walking beyond the borders. Moreover, these border blocks reach the full range within the Y coordinates, assisting players to never go missing inside the game.
Allow and deny blocks. It enables and denies players to build blocks within specific areas.
Camera and Portfolio. This feature permits users to take screenshots and pictures whilst in the game. These images can also be available in their portfolios.
Chalkboards. Minecraft: Education Edition includes this element for players to write messages. It can differ in size and helpful to explain learning goals and instructions within the game.
Non-player characters. These characters, also known as NPC, are helpers to guide students familiar with the game. It also gives messages to students and other additional information about the game.
Minecraft: Education Edition uses these elements to the game, ensuring that it caters to a child’s learning. It also helps them understand the learning setup whilst enjoying the original features of the actual Minecraft.
How Minecraft: Education Edition is related to Hour of Code?
Hour of Code events to honour Computer Science Week also highlights Minecraft: Education Edition. Due to this version’s capacity to teach learners about coding concepts of principles, you can use this during Hour of Code celebrations. Other than that, Minecraft: Education Edition also explores artificial intelligence which is one of the main goals of Hour of Code.
Through this case, parents, teachers, and school administrators can undeniably use Minecraft: Education Edition for their annual Hour of Code event at school or at home.
How safe is it for my child to play?
Both the original Minecraft and Minecraft: Education Edition are excellent and effective educational games. Many schools also use this platform to teach kids coding classes for kids. Teachers and other parents also allow their children to play this as it gives a long list of benefits.
However, it is still important to you to be cautious of your child’s screen time and environment. Remember, you are still responsible for teaching your kid. So, you must handle and control their screen time and always check for the applications they are playing. Try to give them new safe options that they can play and learn. In this case, you will be able to verify the things they are playing. Besides that, schedule a proper gadget time for them to prevent gadget addiction.
What else can help me teach my child about kids coding?
There are kids coding schools in Sydney that your child can enrol in. It offers after-school care programs to help your child with programming classes for kids, computer classes for kids, and even fantastic robotics classes for kids.
Through Skill Samurai, your child can have extracurricular activities for kids that feature coding and robotics classes. It will help your child enjoy and learn coding through awesome games like Minecraft, Minecraft: Education Edition, Roblox, Scratch, and other popular tech and coding games.
Your children and teens, boys and girls age 7 to 18, can enjoy Minecrafting with other players of their age. All of them can explore the world of computer games and how to build one.
If you want your kid to excel in these career-ready skills, sign up now for Skill Samurai code school for kids.
Get started here.