Minecraft: Education Edition is now available for Chromebooks as an Android app.
In August, Google announced the availability of Minecraft: Education Edition on Chromebooks as an Android app.
Minecraft: Education Edition is now generally available for Chromebooks as an Android app. Minecraft:EE is one of the most popular educational learning platforms that promotes creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving in an immersive digital environment.
The availability of Single Sign On was a known limitation that they planned to work on post-launch, and it was the top request of IT Administrators after the launch. Over the last few weeks the team has worked to implement this feature, leveraging the existing SSO implementation between Google Workspace and Office 365.
Earlier this week, an update to the application was pushed into production, and they announced that Single Sign On is now available for Minecraft Education Edition on Chromebooks. Schools can choose to use in-app functionality, SSO from Google accounts to O365 or vice versa, to implement Single Sign On.
Enabling SAML Federation to use a managed Google Account to Sign into Minecraft: Education Edition
Summary
In this option, an IT Administrator will need to link the Google accounts to the Microsoft accounts using SAML. This will mean that the teachers and students will use their Google credentials for all Google products and most Microsoft products. This setup does require significant work by the IT Administrator to setup and manage and there are some limitations to the functionality of some Microsoft products after the accounts are linked. However, once fully set up, especially if configured with auto-provisioning and auto-license assignment, there is limited ongoing effort required to keep the two accounts in sync.
Benefits
- Teachers and students will only need to remember one account, their Google account, to access most products and services that support SAML, including both Chromebook sign in and Minecraft sign in.
- Existing Google accounts can be used to access Microsoft products and services without adding a second account that teachers and students need to use.
Some other educator resources
Minecraft: Education Edition on the Chromebook App Hub
Microsoft’s announcement blog post (Twitter | Facebook) and Getting Started Guide