MinecraftEdu has been used in classrooms around the world to help with the teaching of children, using a modified version of the original Minecraft game. Now Microsoft have snatched it up and will be re-launching it as Minecraft Education Edition later on this summer.

Originally the product of education software developer TeacherGaming, they combined the popular game of Minecraft with features to aid learning. MinecraftEdu was been designed to help teachers manage their pupils’ in-class gaming sessions and has been used to teach everything from maths to foreign languages so far. Minecraft Education Edition will keep those same core features but will be improving upon them, although Microsoft hasn’t yet given any clues as to how they’re going to do this. For the moment Microsoft have said that MinecraftEdu will be continuing as normal, including the hosting service, until Education Edition is working and ready to go. All existing users of the software at that point will then be given a year’s pass of use for Minecraft Education Edition for free.

TeacherGaming have published an FAQ to spell out differences between the two versions as well as giving assurances that Minecraft Education Edition will be a positive thing for everyone.

“Minecraft: Education Edition builds on the early learnings from MinecraftEdu, while growing and expanding its feature set. Working with the MinecraftEdu creators Joel Levin and Santeri Koivisto, we started with all the learnings from the EDU edition, and built its key features into the Minecraft: Education Edition.  We also added new features including login and personalization, the student portfolio feature, a second screen experience for teachers, and the ability to save student progress.”

Exact details will be released within the next few days.