Host multiplayer Minecraft: Education Edition on Azure Virtual Machines
The creative nature of Minecraft has made it one of the premier educational tools for the modern classroom. Teachers around the world have designed, modified, and explored collaborative Minecraft projects for all subjects, and with Minecraft: Education Edition it has become even easier for teachers to spin up multiplayer servers right from their own machines and lead their classes in collaborative building and problem solving.
We're excited to announce the new Minecraft: Education Edition virtual machine (preview) is available on the Azure Marketplace. This release allows teachers to run multi-player Minecraft: Education Edition sessions with the scalability, performance, and security of Azure. Students need only log-in with their school-issued email address to join the learning! And institutions that have a Minecraft: Education Edition license through select Microsoft 365 Education plans need only pay only what they use on the virtual machine itself.
Running Minecraft: Education Edition on Azure can provide teachers more flexibility and control over the learning experience. Many teachers may not have a personal or organized-issued devices that can host large multi-player sessions. Or they aren’t able to leave the multiplayer instance open for students to connect from home, making the environment only accessible during class hours. This is just the first step in pairing experiences in education like Minecraft: Education Edition with the Azure cloud – we invite you to share your thoughts and feedback.
Azure provides $200 credit and a free tier of services (including virtual machines) for educators and IT administrators with Azure Free Account. Students can also receive $100 credit and a free tier of services without requiring a credit card through academic verification with Azure for Students.
Learn more about Minecraft: Education Edition, Microsoft 365 Education, and Azure in Education to try out this new offering in your classroom. Or, share this information with your local schools!
In just a couple steps, teachers can start a multiplayer Minecraft: Education Edition server and students can connect from anywhere, anytime.
If you couldn’t visit us at Microsoft Build 2019 and try out the multiplayer experience for yourself, check out the DYI site for more details.
We are excited to launch a pilot with a few current Minecraft: Education Edition teachers to try out this new Azure VM experience.
If you are a teacher or school IT leader interested in partnering with us to improve this Minecraft: Education Edition experience, please message me (Sarah Guthals on LinkedIn). We look forward continuing partnerships in education!
Source: Azure Blog Feed