Minecraft Education Edition Almost Here!

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Yet more good news from Microsoft for all of you who have been waiting on the Education Edition of Minecraft.

This announcement lets us know that Minecraft Education Edition is almost ready:

In addition, the existing Minecraft educator community members have been great partners in helping us prioritize the most valuable features of MinecraftEdu, and what else they’d like to see in Minecraft: Education Edition. As we get closer to launch, we are increasing our focus on getting deep insights and feedback from educators.In May, we will host a Beta program with over 100 schools from 30 countries around the world to experience Minecraft: Education Edition, share more detailed feedback on the product with us, and help us fine-tune the experience across a diverse set of learning environments.

Then in June, we will release Minecraft: Education Edition with an early access program for educators to download, try for free, and give us feedback. Minecraft: Education Edition early access will be available in 11 languages and 41 countries. During the summer months, we are also going to be focused on working with educators on building out lesson plans, sharing learning activity ideas, and creating re-usable projects.

If you are new to Minecraft, or if you aren’t sure where to start in bringing Minecraft into your classroom and incorporating into your curriculum, the early access program is going to be a great way to familiarize yourself with Minecraft: Education Edition. We also suggest educators check out our many resources on education.minecraft.net, including lesson plans like the Great Pyramids of Giza, or electrical circuits using Redstone. In addition, the Minecraft Mentors program connects you with educators experienced in teaching with Minecraft and demystifies the process.

At the conclusion of our early access program, Minecraft: Education Edition user licenses will be available for purchase through direct and volume licensing channels. The first release of Minecraft: Education Edition will run on the latest versions of Windows 10 and Mac OS X El Capitan. To prepare for using Minecraft: Education Edition,

• Upgrade your computers to Windows 10 or OS X El Capitan
• Sign up for a free Office 365 Education account using your school or district email for each educator and student

For more information and resources on Minecraft: Education Edition, and to sign up to be notified when the early access program becomes available, please visit education.minecraft.net.
We hope you join us for the early access program in June, and that you continue to dialogue with us as we build Minecraft into an immersive vehicle for learning.