All students must login to Minecraft: Education Edition Office 365 Education account. This does not mean that all students have to be able to utilize Exchange, SharePoint, etc. Office 365 can also be restricted by admins to allow only what you want your students to have access to. Office 365 doesn’t have to be an all or nothing service, you can pick and choose what you want to give to your students. Whether that is just an account for Minecraft: Education Edition (that looks like an email address) or Office Online, you can do that.

If your educational institution does not have an Office 365 education environment already setup, you can start an Office 365 Education trial. This lasts 30 days, and during that time period, you would have to attach a domain that you own/manage.

By attaching a domain, this doesn’t mean that you have to start using Office 365 for email. You can attach the domain with a TXT record, and that would allow you to continue using your email solution as you have it setup currently.

Once you have added your domain, as long as it is verified as educational, you will be able to access the free Office 365 Education licenses. You can then create users on a one-by-one basis, in bulk via CSV file, or in bulk with PowerShell as well.

You can then assign users the Office 365 Education license, as well as the Minecraft Education Edition license that you would purchase. Users could then login to Minecraft Education Edition application with their Office 365 accounts that you created to play Minecraft.