Secondary 3 students recreate monuments in 3D

By Annie Lévesque and Keven Poulin, teachers at Collège Sainte-Anne

The third secondary students of Annie Lévesque and Keven Poulin, from Collège Sainte-Anne, took part in a 3D modeling project this year. The two teachers tell us about the course of the learning activity.

The objective of the BlocksCAD Project - 3D Monument was to create a virtual three-dimensional model of a real-life monument. In this project, the students used BlocksCAD, a 3D modeling software that uses block programming to create and manipulate 3D virtual objects. 

The students first got together in teams of two or three. Then, each team had to choose the monument (s) to model according to the complexity and set a goal. Previously, a bank of monuments had been spotted in Google Earth. Each student had to choose the part of the project that would be under their responsibility. 

Through a creative process, the students were able to work on spatial sense and decomposable solids by reproducing their monument to scale. Various strategies had to be used in order to represent details of their monuments or to repeat elements on the structure. For example, the use of loops to create repetitive elements in monuments required the use of functions, which made it possible to make a link with this notion which is on the program of the third year of secondary school.

In order to present the result of their work, a non-immersive virtual exhibition was carried out using Frame VR. The pupils were thus able to appreciate the work of all their comrades and, sometimes, to enter virtually in various monuments which were more voluminous.  

A Web page was created by teachers to guide students through various tutorials on BlocksCAD and a template to hand in.   

—

Did you have some great class projects that you are proud of this year? Do not hesitate to tell us about your approach in a text like this one! Send it to us at info@ecolebranchee.com