Minecraft: Education Edition coming by Summer 2016

Those of us old enough remember a few games that were used in school to help teach typing or just pass the time. I personally remember playing a very early version of The Oregon Trail as well as different games to help learn typing on computers. Well, it looks like we have come a long way from getting dysentery and dying on the trail, as Mojang made the announcement at the 2016 BETT show London last week that they have acquired MinecraftEDU from TeacherGaminng LLC and will be will be creating Minecraft: Education Edition for release in Summer 2016.

The game will be targeted toward schools and other education entities (Libraries, Museums, etc) to be used in classroom settings to utilize the world of Minecraft in a teaching environment. There is a lot of information on the pricing and uses of this new version of the game that can be found at the official FAQ page for the game.

As a father of a couple of children that love Minecraft, I personally find this to be a fantastic decision by Mojang, as so many kids have hopped on the Minecraft bandwagon and the game promotes all kinds of educational values such as cooperation, critical thinking and of course, decision making. Check out the video below that shows off the capabilities of the new game and head over to the official site if you are interested in signing up to acquire licenses to use in your classroom.