We’ve spent our summer building innovative tools to help students of all ages and levels get the most out of learning, the minute they walk back into your classroom.  In this latest edition of What’s New in EDU, we’re excited to share a new batch of features and enhancements to help you encourage independent learning and engage your students – and we’re kicking it off with the expansion of Minecraft: Education Edition.

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Transform your classroom with Minecraft: Education Edition for iPad

Today, we are excited to announce we’re bringing the magic of Minecraft: Education Edition to iPad. Now, students can tap into the power of iPad to build historic monuments, swim through coral reefs with the Update Aquatic, bring creative stories to life, experiment with chemistry, and document their learning with the camera and portfolio features.

Educators trying Minecraft: Education Edition for the first time can get started with a beginner’s tutorial world and access a number of free class resources on education.minecraft.net. A global community of Minecraft Mentors offers year-round onboarding and classroom support, right alongside the growing Minecraft: Education Edition community – now with 35 million licensed teachers and students in 115 countries.

“Minecraft: Education Edition on iPad unlocks new and intuitive ways of collaborating and sharing and has revolutionized the way our students and teachers explore curriculum and projects,” says Kyriakos Koursaris, Head of Education Technology for PaRK International School. “The features allow for deep and meaningful learning, and the values it promotes, from inclusivity to 21 century skills, empower everyone to use technology with extraordinary results,” said Koursaris.

Here’s how to get Minecraft: Education Edition on your school’s iPads next month:

If your school district is already licensed through Microsoft:

If your school is licensed through Microsoft 365 for Education (A3 or A5), you already have access to Minecraft: Education Edition. You will be able to download the app onto iPads in September. To learn more, visit this webpage. What’s more, we’ve updated Intune for Education so it’s easier than ever for IT administrators to manage student devices from one unified, streamlined console.

If you’re interested in trying Minecraft: Education Edition on iPad in your school but have not purchased a license in the past:

Minecraft: Education Edition is licensed via yearly subscriptions that are purchased through the Microsoft Store for Education, via volume licensing agreements and through partner resellers. To learn more, visit our webpage on how to license Minecraft: Education Edition.

Minecraft: Education Edition is licensed via yearly subscriptions, purchased through Authorized Education Partners, or directly from the Microsoft Store for Education. To learn more, visit our webpage on how to license Minecraft: Education Edition.

And for Minecraft players and families who play outside of school:

We’re excited to share that players of the Windows 10 PC and Xbox console version of Minecraft can now use the Chemistry Resource Pack, released originally for Minecraft: Education Edition.

The Chemistry Resource Pack introduces lab tables, element blocks and items that are craftable only using the new chemistry features. With this added feature, players can create elements and combine them into compounds, build a periodic table and combine materials using chemistry to create new items like helium balloons, sparklers, latex, and underwater torches. Learn and experiment with the building blocks of chemistry in the world of Minecraft!

To get the Chemistry Resource Pack, go to the ‘Create New World’ option in the game and, under the ‘Cheats’ menu, toggle the ‘Education’ option.

What else is new in Microsoft Education this month?

Office 365 Education:

Microsoft OneNote helps teachers organize class content, create and deliver interactive lessons, provide feedback, and collaborate. Graphing in Math Assistant is now available in OneNote Online – this tool helps students visualize math problems and equations as they learn the steps to solving a problem.

OneNote is also making improvements to help you save valuable teaching time. Roaming Ink enables Pens and Ink preferences that follow you from device to device. You and your students can easily reuse the custom pens and ink you love, even when you switch devices. Learn more about using OneNote in your classroom.

Open Up resources:

We’re extremely excited to partner with Open Up Resources to offer high quality, free curriculum materials through Microsoft OneNote and Forms. Since the partnership announcement, we’ve been working to incorporate Open Up curriculum seamlessly into OneNote and Forms.

Using OneNote Class Notebook to access the Open Up curriculum, teachers can distribute course materials on any device. Students can write, draw, collaborate, and save their work automatically in their personal digital notebooks. Open Up content in OneNote integrates seamlessly with common LMS and SIS platforms. Using Open Up in Forms, teachers can access one-click assignment and efficient scoring. Get started using Open Up curriculum now.

Technology can be a wonderful tool to help personalize learning for every student in your class. To help students customize reading even more, we’ve added additional colors for page themes in Office Lens. Choose from the expanded selection with the latest update of Office Lens (version 2.15) for iPhone or iPad. Read more details here.

Closed captioning in Stream is also now available so you can make a lesson more accessible by recording it and adding captions.

Microsoft Teams:

Microsoft Teams is the digital hub that brings conversations, content, assignments, and apps together in one place. Educators can create collaborative classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, and communicate with school staff – all from a single experience in Office 365 Education. Check out all the new updates in the Teams back-to-school blog post.

• Rubric Grading now available. Built directly into Teams, rubric grading helps increase assignment transparency for students and allows teachers to give more meaningful feedback. Customize your grading criteria with your own rubric to enable skills-based grading of your assignments.

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• Updates to the assignments experience on mobile: With new updates to iOS and Android apps, you can now access all of your assignments directly when you launch the Teams app and see a simplified list of upcoming tasks, across all of your classes. Students can work on their assignments directly on their phones and turn in.
• Archiving teams: Instead of deleting older teams, you can now archive the team, placing it in a read-only state. This way you can go back and reference what you covered last year, any time you want.
• Reusing assignments: Reuse assignments from current or archived class teams, bringing over instructions, attachments, and customizations from previous assignments to your new assignment.

• New Class Notebook and Staff Notebook tab app: Teachers can enjoy the new and improved Class Notebook and Staff Notebook settings directly inside of Teams. Just select “Manage.”

Skype in the Classroom:

Skype in the Classroom (SITC) is an online community that enables thousands of teachers to inspire the next generation of global citizens through transformative learning over Skype.

• New Activity Plans for your favorite Skype in the Classroom activities. Whether you are going back to school or in the middle of the academic year, make learning relevant and fun for your students by participating in one of the Skype in the Classroom LIVE learning experiences. Use the new Activity plans, written by teachers, to enrich your students’ learning experiences with activities and assessments aligned to ISTE standards. They can be followed step by step, or you can adjust them based on your classroom’s needs. Explore all activity plans here.

Microsoft Photos App:

The Microsoft Photos App makes it easy to tell stories with photos and videos. There is a built-in video editor, making it easy for you and your students to create movies using photos, video clips, music, 3D models, and Hollywood-style special effects. Whether it’s a group history project, a lab report, or a music video just for fun, the Photos app makes it easy to quickly assemble content, add titles, drop in music, enhance your story with special effects, and share. If you liked making videos with Movie Maker, you’ll love what you can do with the Microsoft Photos App.

• Newsroom-inspired 3D effects. We’ve added newsroom-inspired offerings to the 3D effects built into the Photos app. Now your class can add “LIVE” overlays to their video projects, and identify breaking news, 24-hour coverage, or inspiring sports stories.
• Video Editor tile: Jump directly into video projects, or start a new one quickly, with the new Video Editor Tile. Your next big story is only a click away.​

Surface Go  

When we sit down with our education customers, many tell us that they’re looking for hardware that seamlessly integrates with their larger ecosystem of Microsoft-powered devices. Beyond that, our education customers need a device that’s small and sturdy while still providing the performance their students need. And all of this has to be at the right price. That’s why we’re excited about what Surface Go offers for schools, and the magic that it unlocks within each student who uses it.

Surface Go equips both students and teachers with the quality and productivity that Surface is known for in a more compact – and affordable – package. At just 1.15 pounds and 8.3 mm thin, Surface Go packs amazing portable performance into a 10” device. Starting at just $399 MSRP for education customers, it represents a new entry point for the Surface family, while keeping the premium qualities that have come to define Surface.

Surface Go is a great device for schools looking for a Windows 10 device that offers tablet to laptop flexibility, pen and touch input, a natural typing experience with the Surface Go Type Cover, seamless digital inking, and the ability to run full desktop applications.

Early reception to the device has been positive and tech journalists across the world are excited for what Surface Go can do for education.

More information about Surface Go is available here. Education customers who are interested in purchasing Surface Go should contact their Microsoft sales representative or device reseller today.

Intune for Education makes it easy to set up and manage Windows 10 devices in just a few steps, including deploying apps or settings to users, and managing shared devices.

• iOS device management features are now available in Intune for Education. Intune for Education is already a great way to manage your school’s Windows 10 devices, and you will now be able to use it to manage apps and settings on your classroom iOS devices. With these new features, Intune for Education continues to grow as a unified, streamlined administrative console to manage your school devices.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

It’s wonderful to see the variety of new virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, devices, toolkits, and platforms that are continuously emerging. But, for developers, such variation becomes a nightmarish tangle of software, features and business priorities.

This article was originally published on the ParkerhillVR blog.

How does a Unity developer “create once, build many” while dealing with this rich, varied, constantly changing plethora of features and services? The ability in Unity to choose a target platform is often not granular enough. Unity’s moving to address some of these issues with emerging support for XR player settings and API classes. But inevitably, developers need to use higher level toolkits that cater to the actual devices they are targeting in a Unity project. The diagram below illustrates the challenge developer face juggling multiple SDKs, and high-level toolkits that include player rigs, prefabs, very useful script components, shaders and example scenes.

At Parkerhill, we have developed many VR and AR projects and demos, and experienced the pain of trying build for a spectrum of different devices using different SDKs. As a result, we came up with a set of best practices that work for us. Even better, we have implemented a collection of Unity in-editor utilities that facilitate these design patterns, and released them on the Unity Asset Store as the Parkerhill BridgeXR package.

Tip #1. Use additive scenes for player rigs

Unity projects are naturally divided into scenes which implement levels of a game. Unity also allows you to additively load a scene to the current main scene. Additive scenes are a great tool for modularly organizing scenes as separate object hierarchies.

We commonly use additive scenes to load device-specific player rigs containing camera components, input devices and physical event handling. To keep the main scene device-independent, for example, we may have one additive scene with the SteamVR player rig and another containing the Daydream player rig. And then write a scene manager script that adds the corresponding player rig scene when the app starts, based on the actual target device.

Tip #2. Use conditional objects for SDK-specific prefabs

Device SDKs include prefab objects that you use in your scene to implement various features. Examples include teleportation pods, video players, environmental mapping tools, avatars and so on. Another example, based on the target device, you might lso want low-poly versus high-poly versions of your models, since performance and quality requirements vary widely between devices and platforms. Your project can choose to use the appropriate version of a prefab based on the target device, instantiated at runtime.

Tip #3. Apply conditional components to implement SDK-specific behaviors

One of the most distinguishing features of device SDKs are the component scripts you can add to your game object, to implement specific behaviors. A common example of this are interactables, with grabbing and highlighting behaviors. Unfortunately there is no easy way built into Unity for conditionally adding components to objects.

One solution is to save separate versions of your interactable objects as prefabs, and then use the conditional object technique described above to add the correct one to your scene. This results in your maintaining completely separate versions of the same object (one for each device SDK) which introduces a maintenance problem should you want to change the original object.

Unity 2018 introduces new a Variant prefab feature that can help, which allow you to define prefab assets derived from other prefab assets. You could have an original game object as the base prefab, and then make Variants with added interactable components, one variant prefab for each SDK. You’d still end up having separate variant prefabs for each target device, but at least if the base object were modified, the changes will be reflected in each variant.

At Parkerhill we implemented a better solution, called Refabs. In a sense, Refabs are the inverse of Variant Prefabs. A “refab” is a reusable collection of components (saved as a prefab) that can be applied to any game object. They let you separate behavior from objects, as a set of one or more components that are used as a template on game objects.

Refabs work like this: Add components to an empty game object and save it as a prefab. This set of components can be added to any game object using the Refab Loader component. Then the object in your scene, instead of the SDK-specific components, would just have a Refab Loader that points to which refab to use. The same reusable set of components can be added to other game objects too. (For specific examples, see the video “Refabs for Unity demo” https://youtu.be/bkJR1xBLtf0 ).

Tip #4. Map device-specific input events to application semantic events

In addition to player rigs, prefabs and object components, you should also decouple your application from device-dependent input events. For canvas-based UI input, such as buttons, try to use Unity’s standard Event System.

For more general object interactions, like grabbing, using, and throwing, your device-specific SDK may directly manage the user’s hands or input controller, raycasts, and haptic feedback.

To decouple your app from the SDK, don’t use toolkit-specific events in your application. You should map toolkit-specific events to application semantic events. Semantic events are events that have meaning in context of your application. For example, instead of responding to “the left hand trigger button was pressed,” your application may only need to know, “this object has been grabbed.”

Tip #5. Exclude SDK folders to avoid compiler and build conflicts

When you go to build a project that has imported multiple SDKs for a specific platform you may encounter editor or build errors due to conflicts between plugins libraries. You need to remove the unused offending folder. A workaround is to rename the folder with a trailing tilde (“FolderName~”) so it will be ignored by Unity.

The Parkerhill BridgeXR Toolkit

Using these five strategies can go a long way in help make your app device-independent by decoupling it from any one specific SDK. It involves some work, but it can be done manually. Fortunately, Parkerhill has a tool that helps you manage it all nicely!

The Parkerhill BridgeXR plugin for Unity includes a set of in-editor utilities that support each of the five best practices listed above, as follows:

Scene Bridge — makes it easy to selectively load an additive scene to a current scene, based on a current active device identifier (Bridge ID). Useful for player rigs and other device-specific object hierarchies to be included in a scene.

Prefab Bridge — selectively instantiate a Game Object prefab at a spawn point in your scene based on the current active bridge ID. It is used when you have similar but different prefabs for different devices, such as teleport points, video players, and level of detail objects.

Component Bridge — when you have different sets of components defining a complex behavior for each target device, use a Component Bridge to selectively add one or more Unity components to a Game Object based on the current active Bridge ID. Based on the Parkerhill Refab utilities, Component Bridges are a powerful tool for implementing common behaviors with SDK-specific components.

Input Event Mapping — decouple your core application from device-specific SDK input events by mapping them into application-specific semantic events, using BridgeXR’s event sender and receiver components.

Folder Exclusions — in-editor tool that lets you exclude specific folders from builds when targeting one device or another.

Taken separately, each of these utilities are useful in their own right. Combined, they provide a the means to build build a device-independent layer within your Unity projects. BridgeXR helps you manage multiple SDKs in a single project, without version control branches or other unsatisfactory tasks.

Whether implemented yourself, or with the aid of Unity utilities like Parkerhill BridgeXR (available on the Unity Asset Store), using these tips, you can continue to use the high level toolkits you already know and trust, leveraging the best of breed software from the leading VR and AR vendors, and avoid much of the VR and AR toolkit SDK fragmentation that can disrupt your development.

This article is an abbreviated version of the detailed white paper, Best Practices for Multi-Device VR/AR Development, available FREE at Parkerhill.com

About Parkerhill

Parkerhill Reality Labs is an immersive media development company with a history of high quality games and non-gaming applications, educational publications, and agile management practices. Credits include the cross-platform multi-device game, Power Solitaire VR, and the books Unity Virtual Reality Projects and Augmented Reality For Developers (Using Unity).

Japanese anime and video game voice actor Unsho Ishizuka has passed away at the age of 67. 

Ishizuka voiced a variety of characters in a number of notable video games, including Heihachi Mishima in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Tekken 7, Tetsuo Tamashiro in Yakuza 3, and Hojo Ujiyasu in Samurai Warriors. 

He also appeared in popular anime shows, and some will know him as the Japanese voice of Professor Oak in Pokemon, Jet Black in Cowboy Bebop, and Van Hohenheim in Full Metal Alchemist. 

The veteran actor had been receiving medial care for esophagus cancer, but according to a statement from his talent management agency Aoni (translated by Twitter user BlackKite), no treatment proved effective.

We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!

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Another weekend is well and truly upon us, so what better time to discuss our weekend gaming plans – and then actually go and play them, of course! This time around, we’ve got RPGs, whacky minigame collections, older classics, retro goodness, and more, but what about you? Read through the Nintendo Life team’s words, and then let us know what you’ll be playing via our poll and comment sections below. Enjoy!

Dave Frear, retro reviewer

I seem to have slipped into a routine of playing a chunk of Octopath Traveler at the weekend and that will be happening again this week. Combined with another (non-Nintendo system) game I’ll be trying out, I don’t think I’ll have large amounts of free time for anything else. Small amounts of time, though? Sure, and so I’ll be playing some WarioWare Gold between other things. I’ve long been a fan of the quick bursts of frantic microgame action the series provides so I’m keen to get stuck into the mix of old and new challenges offered up in this latest release. I’ll be button-tapping, stylus-ing, and turning my way through, inevitably getting confused at some point but having a blast nonetheless.

Glen Fox, guides editor

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate has had me hooked since the demo was released earlier this week. I struggled to get into it on 3DS because that weird little second analogue stub just wasn’t up to snuff for me. That isn’t a problem on the Switch, and I’ve been gagging for some Monster Hunter on the go. I’ll tell you what, though – it’s kind of tough going from Monster Hunter World to Generations, as you really feel the leap backwards. There were so many quality of life improvements that kind of spoiled me in that game.

Having said that, Generations should hopefully be a little friendlier for bite-sized play. So if you’re on the move and in a bit of a rush, you can still get in a quick bout of Monster Hunting. There’s also something very… comfortable about the low-res visuals. I’m reaching a point where I’m kind of sick of visuals taking precedent over gameplay, and it’s refreshing to have a game that just knows what it wants to achieve and doesn’t really care how it looks. There’s even a certain beauty to the blocky visuals.

Dom Reseigh-Lincoln, reviewer

Well, we all knew this time would come. Telltale’s The Walking Dead has reached its final season, so this weekend I’ll be joining Clem as she concludes her heartfelt (and zombie-filled) odyssey. The first episode is almost here so expect my tear-filled (but spoiler-free) review next week.

With NBA 2K19 only a few weeks away, I’ll still be throwing some three-pointers online before everyone makes the jump to this year’s new instalment. It’s frustrating Madden isn’t getting the Switch treatment this year, but I’m sure 2K’s long-running series can keep my undying love of bombastic American sports sated for the time being.

Jon Cousins, Japan correspondent

This weekend, I’ll be testing the theory that the Nintendo Switch is a portable PS3 by getting through some of my backlog! I’ll be going through Okami HD, Bayonetta and L.A. Noire, but I only own the last one on Switch! Sorry! I don’t think I paid more than 15 sheets for the three back in the day, so if I get back into them then I might give in to that portable goodness, and especially that sweet celestial brush touch control.

Ryan Craddock, staff writer

About a year ago I moved into a new house which has a nice little bit of loft space – a perfect little hideaway for a games room. I immediately threw all of my retro consoles (and newer Mini consoles) and games up there, set up two TV screens, and it all looks lovely, but it turns out that I hardly ever go up to play on them.

So, this weekend I’m thinking of bringing my SNES Mini back downstairs, plonking it on the big screen, and getting stuck into one of the many options available. I’m thinking either Donkey Kong Country, EarthBound, or Super Castlevania IV, although I do still have a run-through of DOOM on the go and I’ll need to keep on top of my daily challenges in Fortnite as well. I say this pretty often, but I really wish there was more time in the day to play – there are far too many great games to choose from!

Dave Letcavage, contributing writer

King K. Rool has been announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He’s getting an amiibo. I’m beyond pumped about that. I’m also feeling nostalgic lately, reminiscing about the days my sister, neighborhood friends, and I spent sitting around my parents’ house playing video games for hours on end. For those reasons, I believe I’ll start another (I say “another” because this happens at least once a year) playthrough of the Donkey Kong Country series. But, because my enthusiasm for the first game isn’t quite the same as it is for the rest, I may start with Donkey Kong Country 2 and go from there. I haven’t decided yet.

Whoa. I just realized that, between 3DS and Switch, every game in the DKC series can now be played on a handheld device. Isn’t that convenient? Yep. Weekend sorted.

Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer

The time has come for me to disappear from the face of the Earth, leaving behind some incredible, hard-working months at Nintendo Life that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. It’s dangerous to go alone so I am making sure the Switch is packed along with my entire library of games – a luxury my very young self, making Game Boy Summer memories in the ’90s, would never have believed possible. Octopath Traveler will continue (now on a daily schedule) but knowing myself I will probably be squeezing a lot of retro-gaming between the beach, sightseeing, music making and sleeping. I will see you all on the other side and leave with the words that became my life motto: Play Hard, Play Loud!

Richard Atkinson, contributing writer

One game that continues to remain securely snuggled in the Switch’s card slot is a title that not only provides colourful carnage on a daily basis due to its online battles, but also inkredible amounts of rage. I’m looking at you, Bloblobber… The addition of the (horribly buffed, in my opinion) bucket of doom in Splatoon 2 is forcing me to try new weapons and lay the lovely Sploosh-O-Matic to one side, and what better time to do so. This weekend sees Europe taking part in another Splatfest with the teams choosing sides that are defined by your preference for how the precious time on holiday is spent.

I’m going for Team Relax, rather than Team Adventure, but no judging please; sitting by the pool with a well-earned beer while snooping around Hyrule for hidden Shrines counts as both, right?

As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to leave a vote in the poll above and a comment below with your gaming choices over the next few days…

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