Minecraft‘s immense popularity has led to a ton of different versions being made. The Bedrock edition stands to be a consistent experience across several different platforms, and the Java edition gives players the original way Minecraft was meant to be experienced. However, many smaller versions of the game have been made over the year that have totally unique features.
The Legacy Console version was offered on consoles before the Bedrock edition launched. Pocket Edition was originally a scaled-down version of Minecraft Java Edition but eventually evolved into the framework that Bedrock edition was built around. These different versions are really just ports of Minecraft to other systems, but the Education Edition of Minecraft is actually far different from any other alternate version.
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Minecraft Education Edition was created as a tool for schools to help educate children with the sandbox environment of Minecraft. The Education edition of the game is only available to schools, museums and public libraries and contains tons of additional tools to help educators instruct a virtual classroom. These new mobs, items and blocks were designed to be used in an education setting, but they could easily have some really cool uses in the normal versions of Minecraft.
One feature with tons of potential is the programmable NPC mobs that share their models will villagers, though they do have skins to help them stand out. The main focus of these NPCs includes custom dialogue when interacted with. Players also have the ability to link any of the standard Minecraft commands to these NPCs. In the Education edition, the NPCs served as ways for teachers to create guides for students, but these NPCs have tons of potential outside of the Education edition for adventure maps.
The Education edition also has a unique placeable item that was briefly featured in the Pocket Edition of the game. The camera can be used after being placed on the ground or from the player’s inventory and will take the first-person screenshot. The camera works in conjunction with a portfolio item that lets players view screenshots in-game. The ability to view those screenshots in-game or even set up an in-game camera angle could really expand the screenshot feature in Java and Bedrock.
Another item that serves as an improvement on something already in the game is the chalkboard. These are basically signs that come in three sizes and can hold more text than a normal wooden sign that lets educators display learning goals to a class. Whilst chalkboards themselves wouldn’t really fit thematically in the other versions of Minecraft, a way to make bigger signs would be a nice quality-of-life change for many players.
A few other quality-of-life features in Minecraft‘s Education edition would be incredibly well-received if they were ported to other versions. For example, the Education edition lets players enable extra toolbar space to hold more items. There are also new ways to adjust world permissions, such as letting certain players fly in Creative Mode and only enabling editing for the owner of a world or server.
These are some fairly minor features that could improve some of the underappreciated features in the Java and Bedrock editions of Minecraft. Some of these features are actually in the Bedrock edition, though they require activating a special feature in the options menu. Given that many of these changes have been recreated through mods for the Java edition, it’s clear that fans would love to see more of the Education edition’s content make its way over to the other versions of Minecraft.
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