Great news for all primary schools using GSuite. Our students can now access Minecraft Education Edition for their Chromebooks. It's in beta at the moment on the Google Play Store.
What you need to know:
Minecraft Education Edition is free to all staff and students in New Zealand Schools due to the current Microsoft Schools Agreement. To make this work you will need a Microsoft 365 login and password. This can be easily set up by your Schools Tech Admin by uploading everyone's details in a CSV file to Microsoft 365.
How to get beta on your Chromebooks: (from the Microsoft Zendesk)
https://minecrafteducation.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044728212
Getting started with Minecraft: Education Edition on the Chromebook
We are excited to announce that Minecraft: Education Edition has finally made its way to the Chromebook platform! We’re a game-based learning platform that promotes creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving in an immersive digital environment. It’s our mission to build a better world through the power of play, and we’re grateful for your interest!
Below you will find the steps to play the Chromebook Beta.
Installing Minecraft: Education Edition on Chromebooks
The Chromebook Beta won't appear in the admin console. You will need an unmanaged account to access the Beta. Please follow Google's directions here:
Once the app is officially released admins will be able to deploy and manage Minecraft: Education Edition using the Google Admin Console or the enterprise mobility management (EMM) console.
Minimum Specs/Device Requirements
- ChromeOS Version: M83 or newer
- Hard Drive: 350 MB free (~220MB application + space for worlds) per account on the device
- Device supports the managed Play Store apps: Chrome OS Systems Supporting Android Apps
- CPU/RAM: We will be using feedback from the beta to finalize minimum specs.
Licensing Requirements
Every student and teacher using the Chromebook Beta will need to login to the game with an Office 365 Education account with a Minecraft: Education Edition license assigned to it
- Learn more about Office 365 education
- Purchasing licenses for Minecraft: Education Edition
- Managing licenses for Minecraft: Education Edition
Shared Devices
There are a couple additional considerations to be aware of if the Chromebooks are shared between multiple students.
- World Storage: In Minecraft: Education Edition, worlds are stored locally on the device. If students frequently change devices or if accounts are removed when the student signs out, we strongly suggest exporting worlds and saving them to cloud storage or removable storage before signing off of the device.
- Installation/Hard Drive Usage: Chromebooks keep applications separated for each user, which means each account on the device will install Minecraft: Education Edition independently. You will need to plan for ~220 MB + space for worlds per user on the device. The managed Play Store does keep a download cache that is shared across all users on a device to expedite installation so while it won't save hard drive space, bandwidth to download the application should be once per device.
Known Issues
- Performance: You may experience lower framerates and pieces of the world (“chunks”) that are slow to load. There are two potential causes that we are aware of:
- Chromebook applications can experience performance issues when the device has been changed from its default screen resolution. Ensure that the default screen resolution is set in Device Settings.
- Your device may be near or below the minimum technical specs for Minecraft: Education Edition. We are continuing to optimize performance and evaluate different devices. We will publish the minimum and recommended specs before the beta ends.
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