The International School of London (ISL) Qatar Virtual Winter Carnival 2020 was hosted recently on Minecraft Education Edition. The event was a creation of an innovative and talented group of students from Grade 7 to Grade 11. They have been working on creating the virtual world over the past few months to ensure that, despite the restrictions brought by the pandemic, the community can still enjoy the school’s annual winter carnival. Much time and effort went into ensuring that this highly experimental event – as in previous years – provided an unforgettable fun and experience.
The carnival – a first-of-its-kind – was open for all students, teachers and parents to register. For security reasons, only participants who are associated with ISL and has a school e-mail account could enter the virtual world of Minecraft Education Edition and ISL Qatar’s Winter Carnival.
The idea originally came about when the students realised that the school would be unable to host its traditional winter carnival. The students were inspired to use Minecraft after several ISL Qatar teachers were introduced to what originally was known as ‘the sandbox game’. The students saw an opportunity to use Minecraft to bring the community together and to raise the morale of its members, across all age groups.
In collaboration with the staff including the IT and operation officer and marketing team, the members of the ISL Qatar Student Council set up servers and worked to overcome both technical and logistic issues. The ISL community really stepped forward to build the construction of a landscape and winter world. The G1 students helped with the decorations. A sister school in London also took part in the event as student council members from both schools aided with the preparations.
The students are especially proud of the support they have received from Stephen Reid, Senior Customer Engagement PM at Microsoft and one of the developer of Minecraft Education Edition. Reid took time out of his busy schedule to meet the students and to provide them with additional advice.
The students are keen to continue working with Minecraft Education Edition in the months ahead, and to show the international and educational communities just how accessible and useful this developmental learning tool is.
ISL Qatar Students’ cultural and linguistic identities are valued and nurtured through our international curriculum and mother tongue language programmes. ISL Qatar currently offers 12 mother tongue language programmes in Spanish, French, Arabic, Portugese, Greek, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian. ISL Qatar’s student body of over 1,160 is aged from three to 18.
The idea originally came about when the students realised that the school would be unable to host its traditional winter carnival. The students were inspired to use Minecraft after several ISL Qatar teachers were introduced to what originally was known as ‘the sandbox game’. The students saw an opportunity to use Minecraft to bring the community together and to raise the morale of its members, across all age groups.
In collaboration with the staff including the IT and operation officer and marketing team, the members of the ISL Qatar Student Council set up servers and worked to overcome both technical and logistic issues. The ISL community really stepped forward to build the construction of a landscape and winter world. The G1 students helped with the decorations. A sister school in London also took part in the event as student council members from both schools aided with the preparations.
The students are especially proud of the support they have received from Stephen Reid, Senior Customer Engagement PM at Microsoft and one of the developer of Minecraft Education Edition. Reid took time out of his busy schedule to meet the students and to provide them with additional advice.
The students are keen to continue working with Minecraft Education Edition in the months ahead, and to show the international and educational communities just how accessible and useful this developmental learning tool is.
ISL Qatar Students’ cultural and linguistic identities are valued and nurtured through our international curriculum and mother tongue language programmes. ISL Qatar currently offers 12 mother tongue language programmes in Spanish, French, Arabic, Portugese, Greek, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian. ISL Qatar’s student body of over 1,160 is aged from three to 18.
