Create your school with Minecraft

By Alexandra Coutlée, educational advisor in digital integration at the Center de services scolaire de Laval

Launched in May 2021 by the pedagogical team of the Laval School Services Center, the “Create your school with Minecraft” competition was a huge success. It had several objectives, including those to introduce a new digital tool to students and their teachers, to increase the feeling of belonging to the school, to shine the creative talent of the students and, in addition, it was a great way to end the year on a motivating note. 

The competition was posted on the site My tech tools, a site for students. It was aimed at elementary and secondary school students attending a CSS de Laval school. Participants had to represent their school as faithfully as possible by working on estimation, measurements and, of course, their creativity.

Students could choose to create as a team or to embark on the adventure alone. Some teachers have made it an end-of-year project. The whole class then participated. The sharing of screenshots and the Minecraft worlds created allowed the jury, made up of four members of the CSS de Laval pedagogical team, to choose the winners.

All participants had the opportunity to receive a certificate of participation and thus became officially recognized as Minecraft builders at CSS de Laval. The winning teams or students also won a 3D reproduction of their school.

Several tutorials were available to guide students in their appropriation of Minecraft Education. This allowed them to discover this version of the famous game, a tool that is accessible free of charge for students and teachers of schools with an educational license of Microsoft Office 365. 

Guided tours of the creations

Winners are announced here, on the contest page. You can take a guided tour of the worlds thanks to videos and images and you can even compare real establishments with virtual ones since a visit with Google Street View is also available.

Special mention and favorite from the jury: a video of Gabriel, a student at Père-Vimont school, who not only built his school to participate in the competition, but also designed the interior which he shows to the using a video of his own, available on the contest page.

Other competitions to introduce students to collaborative and creative CSS de Laval tools are planned for the 2021-2022 school year.

Congratulations to all participants and to the contest winners!

Do you organize similar activities to provide your students with positive digital experiences? Do not hesitate to write to us to tell us about it! info@ecolebranchee.com