Dedicated Server for Minecraft:EE
Could we please have an option to create a dedicated server with classroom controls? I have different classes that use the same world, and it would simplify things for the students and teachers if the world was "always up".
Also - are there any plans to increase the player limit above 30? I would love to get 100+ students in there for massive projects...!
Many thanks and keep up the hard work
FG
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A dedicated server that we can run ourselves would be a significant benefit to us. As it is right now, we just have the client running on a dedicated Windows server. This does prevent the players from sleeping since the server "player" can't sleep. Also, the client seems to log out on occasion, and the access code eventually stops working for some reason.
All this to say, I'm one more vote for a dedicated server.
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Hey, looking for updates on dedicated servers. I have a VERY cool Dream SMP download, and I help my teacher with the younger ones by teaching them history on the SMP so they play and listen. Please see if their are dedicated servers by 2022
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Hay I make earth in Minecraft I need set up sever for myself and make a link to my earth sever
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Definitely need a dedicated server solution for Education Edition! I have access to an extra student account I can use to host a classroom world that I can leave up most of the time but education Edition doesn't seem to stay stable all the time when left up in a world with the "player account" idle for long periods of time. Generally I need to reset hosting a couple times a day and I have to restart the whole thing every other day if not every day when it locks up and stops responding. Would be so much better if we could have server software that we could configure with a whitelist of students who are meant to be allowed to work in that world and some logging ability to capture when students are in the world and log the chat.
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You know, it has been under consideration for a very long time, so either Mojang forgot about this or just are straight-up lying. Mojang if you see this, please include this with the 1.18 update!
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Since the start of the outbreak, many events and workshops are held using this wonderful tool. Nonetheless, for all the educators wishing to bring back their school to life within the minecraft world, this is really an obstacle too difficult to work around. We are talking about taking the next step and grant users the ability to connect when they so wish and "simulate" going to their respective classes within an institution. Dedicated servers are definitely a function too important to be missing in times like this.
(Adding from duplicate post)
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Ethan Cooper See that's what is so great about using the IP addresses instead. No matter what happens I made the IP static so it's never going to change. Even if the code needs a refresh kids can still connect with just the IP.
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If Minecraft Education Edition is Truly Bedrock based then couldn't the code in the normal Bedrock Edition Software be Edited to work for Minecraft Education Edition?
Minecraft Bedrock Server Software: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server/bedrock
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I've been following this for way to long. Why can't students and teachers just have a 1 gig partition in onedrive reserved for minecraft hosting? And the whole process could be made SO simple w/ power apps. An application template that lets you see the join code/IP address of a world and have a insta-link to join it. Don't wanna waste space? Make a separate 1 gig area!
This could make things so much more simple.
I even made a concept myself:
If I can do it, A giant company can. Come on, Microsoft!
They can also start with something that isn't kid friendly, then make the update later on.
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What if you implement servers, but only people on the same office 365 tenant can join, and only specific people can join with a special join code. this will allow MEE to have servers. that is my idea.
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This, but for M:EE: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server/bedrock
Cloud-based options would also be acceptable. We'd subscribe right now if it were an option.
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I'm not sure why the whole dedicated server for education edition has not progressed. But the dedicated server for Bedrock edition isn't really much to write home about either. So, we are left having to burn student licenses in order to host shared worlds. We can essentially leave them always up (might need to be restarted regularly like anything else of course) but that means you have to leave the "player" in the world which has drawbacks (like sleeping or needing to get that "player" into the nether or end so that they don't stop the players in the over world from sleeping through the night.)
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Well they could make an online office 365 app that you could sign into and host a server on. It would be nice if it would run for say, 8 AM to 8 PM, with the host also having the ability to join the server.
This would be helpful for the mini Bed-Wars and Sky-Wars tournaments that would happen which where fun (even as a teacher that knows almost nothing about player versus player stuff) to participate in.
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I do realise that this is very much next level thinking around this basic idea of having cloud servers for minecraft worlds but ..........
would be nice to have a secured environment where you could set up a world based on classes, or specific templates or activities - ie want to run a design challenge - then set up this world with a preconfiguration suitable for each student to have their own space that they can work on. Ideally would be great to have it as an assessment task in teams where I can create groups or individuals in a class world.
For example if I am running a computer science lesson on python with a minecraft tutorial (from the inbuilt tutorials) then i assign my class or team to it - there is a link that opens up from team and all the learning material exists (or links back to the lessons).1 -
Please, dedicated server software. Perhaps One per Faculty account?
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Hey! We have a school of 600 students, every class from A-D have their own world. The teachers computers need a minimum of 8GB ram to host the MC world for their students, if a teacher is sick one day, we cant access that world. I know there is a export/import world option but having a option to host a 24/7 dedicated server for the students would be the optimal solution.
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Yes there is a discord server for Minecraft Education Edition.
What we are talking about in this thread though is a software solution for a dedicated game server for Minecraft Education edition where we could have an always up world that wouldn't tie up the teachers Microsoft account to host it.
Back in 1.17 when the Multiplayer functions for education edition were stable and we could allow people to join via IP address and port, It tended to work well enough to have students Join the world that way and I would just stick the "hosting" player in a box in the bottom of the nether to keep them from interfering with sleeping in beds and the day/night cycle for survival worlds I would set up for the class. This actually worked rather well for us.
Now that the IP address and Port method of joining worlds is no longer an option. And there are tons of issues with joining multiplayer worlds now. I really want/need a way to have a "server" to host a world. The way it is working now, the worlds become inaccessible after a time to joining using the link, join code or connection ID or sometimes the Minecraft client simply shuts down on it's own. I then have to restart minecraft (sometimes the whole computer) and then re-share the Join code, link and connection ID.
Back in 1.17 I didn't have to re-share the IP address or Port unless something caused us to get a new public IP (which only seemed to happen if we had to upgrade our IPS's modem/router). I might sometimes need to restart the computer and minecraft but all that entailed was telling the students that it was back up and they could join using the ip address and port they already had info for.
Yes, it is kinda nice that supposedly now one need not make a bunch of changes like port forwarding in order to host multiplayer games. Unfortunately the fact that now we need everyone to go into their firewalls and whitelist a long list of URLs, and apps and still there are situations where people on the same LAN can't join each other's games for more than a minute and usually can't join them at all kinda defeats the benefit of this update now. I would have been happy remaining on 1.17 for another year for them to get the 1.18 update right. At least in 1.17 it was a little more like having a dedicated server.1 -
I work for a huge school district where I've been cheerleading M:EE as a transformational learning platform at the highest tier of the SAMR model. This year I have noticed a big shift with more teachers than ever willing to use M:EE in their classrooms without direct support from me. But, the firewall issue we are experiencing this year threatens to break teachers trust in the platform, and by extension damages my credibility.
Multiplayer capability, and teacher-minded UI(classroom mode!), not pre-fab worlds, is where Microsoft needs to invest. This platform enables powerful communities for socially-constructed learning. It is also the closest approximation to a working metaverse on the market. School districts will pay for this tech if teachers use it, but it needs to be stable.
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I get why people want servers. I want them as well. But then I also don't want to deal with kids on a school-sanctioned space working without any teachers online with them -- something will go haywire and it's going to be the teachers' responsibility, even though they were not online at the time.
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Bryan Sanders
Unfortunately, Even in a teacher hosted world How truly "Supervised" are the students the way Education Edition works right now? If the teacher is able to be staring at the computer screen the whole time they may be able to monitor the chat but if there are more than a small group of students working in a rather confined area, the teacher can't see everything the whole time. Students are able to join each other's worlds without supervision and teachers can't control that.
So I see a server that has logging capabilities along with classroom management controls to help manage permissions and what can be done in different areas of the world as something that could be Just as "supervised if not even more so" since it could likely be tied to a classroom mode sort of Control panel o r GUI that teachers could more easily monitor.
Only real difference I see between a dedicated server world and a p2p teacher hosted world goes is the p2p hosted world is very unstable and has no built in logging or classroom management Pack for minecraft education edition. I mean there is nothing stopping a teacher from putting a world up on an extra computer and giving the kids the join codes while they are handling other teaching activities, how is that any different than putting a world up on a server and making it accessible to the students?
I know it is possible with dedicated servers to set up ways to control the servers remotely via other apps. So it could be possible for the teacher to shut down the server or monitor chat from their phone even if they can't be sitting in from of the computer to monitor it. I suppose some programer types might be able to figure out how to create a "classroom mode" app to control the p2p hosting world that could be put on a cell phone but the problem still stands that you need to set up the connection from the Hosting computer each time you need to restart and I don't know a good way to copy and paste from my phone to the computer, especially not remotely when the computer has to restart.1 -
No doubt, if teachers are not in the shared world, or are inexperienced compared to the students, there will be more issues. And you can't stop everything. Everyone knows that. I don't support the moves to disable Minecraft chat since kids could just build the F-word out of wool blocks or write a terrible book with the book & quill.
But in my nearly 30 years of experience working with thousands of faculty and admin and families, the presence of the teacher is priority number one with school-sanctioned work. Sure, you'll have some at-home group projects sometimes, but the work emanates from the presence of a teacher.
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A Dedicated Server should act just as a current teacher server does but with better controls and more reliability. I agree that students need to be properly supervised but without adequate controls this is impossible anyway. The current situation where everything has to be run off an unreliable teacher server is not ok. A Dedicated Server should empower a teacher with as many options and controls that is adequate at their disposal.
The features I would like are:
- Reliability
- Chat logs being saved
- Logs for actions like killing other players
- Report feature with some kind of playback of an offending action
- Whitelist/Blacklist students
- Time of day scheduling for availability
- Options to control if students need to be on the school grounds to access the server
- Ability to include mods for Bedrock
- Hosted or self-hostedI think that it is crazy that this hasn't already been implemented considering the immense popularity of Minecraft and Minecraft: Education Edition
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Heck, just think what a wonderful world it would be to have an Education Edition Server where Logging was enabled by default (didn't require an operator to setup the classroom mode connection manually each time the client crashes.)
AND could be accessed without needing to share NEW log in codes every few minutes because of needing to restart crashed clients.
AND be able to whitelist which students are allowed in the world for the session.
Oh how wonderful that would be.1 -
Knowing that resources have to be allocated to address this. . . . time, money, people, planning, etc. . . . would you prefer a server option to take precedence over developing other aspects of MCEDU?
For example, if the Chemistry set could be given 100 new recipes, would you prefer that over MCEDU servers?
I'm trying to be realistic about this suggestion and put it up against other parts of what makes MCEDU special that are still in need of A LOT of development.
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Bryan Sanders, I want to reply to your question about priorities for MCEE. I believe that this thread is addressing the most important priority needed in MCEE. The very lack of teacher oversight of chats, student actions, and server access is why I do not continue to work with MCEE at schools anymore. It's an uphill climb to try to use Minecraft to teach anything when you can't monitor what they are doing or saying, and you have no resource to start any meaningful large joint projects because you are physically not able to keep the world active long enough or at the right times to bring in collaborative work from other classes, etc. My school had licenses and computers, ipads, and an elective class for MCEE...no more. It is not worth my stress and time.
Like many others, I have been monitoring this thread for over 2 years, in part to know that I did not face these struggles alone, and also to be aware of any progress to any development towards these priorities. So, yes, I believe that adding 100 new recipes to the Chemistry set or other developments, as important as those are, are not as important as making the entire platform truly usable and functional as a teaching resource. As soon as Microsoft makes this a reality, I will reinvest in MCEE. Otherwise, it is a waste of energy and time, IMO. Microsoft is really dropping the ball on this.
Minecraft has SO much potential to be a real educational tool. It really disappointed me that during the world Covid shutdown, they didn't see how they could have supported student learning if they would have focused on the needs addressed in this thread, including improving connection stability issues. And now that the world is moving beyond... they still haven't addressed any of this.
Thank you for your question!
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Bryan Sanders
For my group, I would definitely have to place an education dedicated server above chemistry or even improving on the Agent and coding right now.
Or at least an explanation as to WHY the request for a dedicated server has been ignored for the last few years. As in since that Azure Pilot program was tried several years ago, as far as I know there was no announcement about why it was abandoned and no further steps or comments on dedicated servers for education have been made.
In my mind, the multiplayer functionality and improved teacher controls are really high on the list of things needing to be improved on MCEDU. AND I think a very good way to improve both of those things may well be via Dedicated Server.1 -
Brian Konrad Can you tell me the link for your Intranet webpage for your server?
Thank you,
Kanji Camacho
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Bumping this. Please!
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Since the start of the outbreak, many events and workshops are held using this wonderful tool. Nonetheless, for all the educators wishing to bring back their school to life within the minecraft world, this is really an obstacle too difficult to work around. We are talking about taking the next step and grant users the ability to connect when they so wish and "simulate" going to their respective classes within an institution. Dedicated servers are definitely a function too important to be missing in times like this!
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