Woodcrest student wins big in National Minecraft Competition

NEWS RELEASE
LAKEHEAD PUBLIC SCHOOLS
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Lakehead Public Schools is proud to announce that Alex Coghill, a student at Woodcrest Public School, won second place in the 2020 Canadian Storytelling in Minecraft competition.
 
The competition took place in June when Alex was in Grade 6. The Canadian Storytelling in Minecraft competition was open to students nation-wide and asked contestants to depict a Canadian historical event or location using Minecraft and include historical facts and appealing visual detail. Alex chose to tell the story of the fur trade in 19th century Canada featuring Fort William Historical Park. With the guidance of three Lakehead Public Schools teachers who ran the Minecraft club (Mr. Magill, Mr. McCreery and Mr. Sandberg), Alex built a detailed virtual replica of the Historical Park, including historical buildings and voyageurs in action. Alex created a narrated Minecraft video of the simulated experience of a fur trading voyageur arriving at the Historical Park via canoe on the Kaministiquia River and navigating his way throughout the village. “I know that in today's world lots of jobs use technology and Minecraft teaches you how to work in a computer environment. I think the skills that I learned during the online Minecraft club and while working on the project are something I can use in the future,” says Alex. The contest was run by Logics Academy and received 75 submissions with over 100 participants from coast to coast.
 
When the pandemic began last spring, Mr. Magill, Mr. McCreery and Mr. Sandberg created the Minecraft club to provide students with an extracurricular opportunity to be creative, learn, and engage with one another. The Minecraft club was a huge hit with 20-50 students participating each day. The teachers were happy to keep the essential student-teacher connection during the pandemic and watch students thrive in a learning game they love.