Minecraft Education Edition on ChromeBooks!

 In case you have been hiding yourself away, (well, we all have this past year) Minecraft Education Edition has FINALLY made its way to ChromeBooks!   So, what does this really mean?

Minecraft Education Edition (Minecraft EE) can be found in the Google™ Play Store for download, but there are a couple of exceptions to this.  First of all, your Chromebook must be fairly new in order to use the play store, and if you want to download and install it all on your own, you will need to ensure that your ChromeBook is unmanaged.

So, what about managed devices?  If your devices are managed, one of the Google™ Administrators at the district level can push the application out to the Google™ Play Store for students and teachers to install.  Once the application is installed, the user will find it in the applications on the ChromeBook.

So, can anyone use Minecraft EE?  Well, yes and no.  Yes, anyone can use to program, but the individual MUST have a Microsoft Office 365 account and a license to use the program.  Schools can purchase licenses for $5.00 per student per year if they don't already have an Office 365 subscription for their district.

Ok, so I have Minecraft on my ChromeBook, now what?  Open up the application, use your Office 365 credentials to log in, and start crafting!  If you wish to join other worlds, you will ONLY be able to join worlds within your domain, and that is a safety feature (very cool) that has been put in place.  In the case of my district, we have some students learning from home and others that are physically in the classroom.  Unfortunately, at this time, if students are on the district network, they cannot join with others that are on outside networks.  This has caused a few issues with teachers trying to teach Minecraft EE, but they have all found ways to work with it.  Just be aware that this can happen in your district as well.

What about memory and saving worlds?  I recommend that students save their worlds and then EXPORT them to the desktop, and then upload them into their Google™ Drive.  In this way, less memory on the device is being used.  When the student wants to add more to a particular world, they just download the world to their ChromeBook and import it.