Education Dept. announces ideal school competition
By John McPhaul
jpmcphaul@gmail.com
Education (DE) Secretary Eliezer Ramos Parés said Sunday that registration is now available for the Microsoft Minecraft: Education Edition Challenge 2022, a competition that, in collaboration with Microsoft Puerto Rico, seeks to enable students to create their ideal school, promoting accessible education in a safe and quality school environment.
“Our students are creative and have many interesting ideas that are highly valid for our educational system,” Ramos Parés said in a written statement. “Gov. Pedro Pierluisi and yours truly believe in them and their contribution is important to us. This competition has the function that the student continues to develop creatively, while expressing what would be, according to their feelings, a safe and successful school environment. We are very excited to learn about their work and proposals and we encourage everyone to participate.”
Those interested have until Feb.16 to complete the registration application, which can be accessed www.aka.ms/MinecraftChallenge2022. The competition has two categories, Intermediate for youth from 5th to 8th grade and a Superior for youth from 9th to 12th grade. Only one project per entrant is allowed, using Minecraft: Education Edition and Microsoft Flipgrid.
There are several prizes for the winners: first place will win a curved Samsung 32” Class UHD monitor, along with the Razer Homerun Gaming Bundle; second place will receive a Bose QuiteComfort Headset and third place a DJL Tello Boost Combo. The winners of the voluntary and virtual competition will be announced at the March 16 Minecraft event.
As part of the requirements, at the time of construction, students must consider that the infrastructure is physically accessible to all people and that it is safe against atmospheric phenomena. In addition, they must show that they have applied some content that they have learned from a regular subject such as mathematics, science, Spanish, English and/or social studies.
“We continue to support activities that integrate topics focused on technology and programming,” said Guillermo López, the DE secretary of academic affairs. “This well known game gives students the opportunity to develop skills such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and technological mastery, which is necessary for the society we live in in the 21st century. I encourage students from all educational regions to participate.We want to see how they put all their skills into practice.”
The press release added that Yanira Santa, operations manager of the DE Fine Arts Program, is available to answer questions by email at santamy@de.pr.gov.