Pupils from Richmond Avenue Primary school, Shoeburyness, Southend-on-Sea, helped launch a new Minecraft education game this week, when the whole school, took part in two rather special assemblies given by engineers from Cadent.
The new Minecraft education game has been developed by Skewb Climate with Cadent, to make children more aware of potential hazards around roadworks and to encourage them to actively travel to school.
Headteacher at Richmond Avenue Primary School, Miss Moneypenny commented, “To think our children will be the first to use this specially developed Minecraft game is incredible.”
Cadent engineers presented to the whole school, explaining what they should and shouldn’t be doing near road works and then introduced them to the educational Minecraft game. The assemblies took place ahead of the mains replacement project starting outside of the school next week; with Richmond Avenue being closed for seven weeks whilst the work is completed.
Miss Moneypenny continued, “I am so pleased our school was chosen to launch the educational Minecraft game. It’s definitely a different way to engage children in safety around roadworks. Our pupils were very excited to try the game as soon as possible and had lots of questions form Cadent.”
Gary Hawkins, Streetworks manager at Cadent said, “It’s great to see our hard work come to life and it was a pleasure to see so many children engaged and excited about active travel and site safety.
“We hope that this trial will provide us with some key learnings to take our Minecraft game to more schools and promote this important message when works are taking place near to schools. A huge thanks to Kate Moneypenny and staff at Richmond Avenue Primary School for their support.”
The Minecraft education game is free to use, and a player has to answer questions and collect items that they will use later to build a safe roadworks site, in the same way as the traditional Minecraft game.
Gary continued, “Making sure children are safe around roadworks has always been priority but making it exciting so that they fully understand has been a big challenge.
“We have spent over two years developing this game with Skewb Climate, with support from Transport for London, to see it go live today has been very exciting. The children were very excited and wanted to start playing the game as soon as possible.”
“In the future, if we have any roadworks near a school, we’d like to go into the school and show the children the game first, so they have aware of the hazards around roadworks, learn about the safety in a fun and engaging way.”
To view the introduction to the Minecraft Game
ENDS
Year 5 & 6 Pupils from Richmond Avenue Primary School, Shoeburyness, Southend-on-Sea
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