Civilization is heading to the classroom with new educational edition (update)

2K and GlassLab Games are partnering for CivilizationEdu, a version of the popular turn-based strategy games made directly for the high school classroom. Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization franchise, announced the news at this year's Games for Change festival during a conversation about his work on the franchise.

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A member of GlassLab joined Meier on stage to discuss the upcoming learning-based game, which will be meant for high school students and remains undated. The studio was founded in 2012 with the mission of combining video games with learning experiences.

CivilizationEdu will be a teaching tool much like Minecraft's educational edition, produced by TeacherGaming. That version of the game, MinecraftEdu, is designed to be used in classrooms in a variety of subjects, thanks to mods and specific in-game tools. Specific details on how CivilizationEdu will translate the strategy game experience to schools remain scarce.

For those who have are no longer required to spend their days in a classroom, there's another Civilization game on its way: Civilization 6 is out this October, in time for the series' 25th anniversary. We got a chance to preview the game; read our in-depth feature to find out what's new.

Update: In a press release, 2K confirmed that it would ship CivilizationEdu in the fall of 2017. It will include instructional videos, lesson plans and other tutorials for educators to use.

"CivilizationEDU will provide students with the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, consider and evaluate the geographical ramifications of their economic and technological decisions, and to engage in systems thinking and experiment with the causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political and socioeconomic development," the publisher said of how the game should fit into curricula.

Correction: GlassLab is not the maker of MinecraftEdu. That would be TeacherGaming. The story has been corrected.