As great as Minecraft is, it's not exactly suitable for schools, as it is a video game. But what happens when you give Minecraft powerful administrative controls, thousands of lessons and interactive worlds, and a set of versatile tools and mechanics aimed towards encouraging learning and teamwork? You get Minecraft: Education Edition, which combines the best of Minecraft with a growing community of educators, teachers, and experts that can design and implement lessons for the game. The Education Edition has been around a while for Windows, macOS, and iPad, but one important platform for education was missing: Google's Chromebooks.

That's no longer the case, as a few weeks ago Mojang Studios quietly began a beta for Chromebooks, letting educators with Microsoft 365 Education accounts test the learning software for their classrooms. As of now, this is just a beta, so there are bound to be performance and stability issues while they test the Education Edition on the wide variety of affordable hardware offered by Chromebooks.

Mojang Studios is accomplishing the beta by offering the Education Edition as an app through the Google Play Store, which can be installed by an unmanaged account (admin access through the Google Admin Console or enterprise mobility management console isn't available yet). Once the app is installed, educators and students can sign in with an elligible Microsoft 365 Education Account, and take advantage of the huge number of lessons available to the program.

This is a big move, since Chromebooks (at least in the USA) are huge in schools. This dramatically increases the access students have to a fun, unique learning tool that teaches more than just math, science, or other topics. Collaboration, teamwork, and creative problem solving are all an important part of Minecraft: Education Edition. If you're an educator and you're interested in giving the beta a try, you can check out Mojang Studios' guides here.

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