Announcing the Make:Change Contest winners

This fall, we announced a contest inviting students across Canada to show how they would use STEM skills for positive change. It was a chance to showcase all the amazing things that students can do when they engage with STEM. Today, thanks to help from our partners at Actua and Fair Chance Learning, we’re excited to announce the winners!
The grand prizes for the contest are two makerspace kits that feature a cache of helpful tech for use in classroom projects. The kits include Arduino boards, Adafruit circuits, and Azure IoT kits, along with devices generously supplied by our partners at HP Canada: a class set of 28 HP X360 G1 touch laptops with HP Active Pens, an HP PageWide Pro printer, and an HP Sprout!

Today, we’re proud to announce our winners: the Minimakers of Central Public School in Grimsby, Ontario, and the STEM team from Notre Dame High School in Toronto!

The Minimakers come from Mr. Martin’s grade three class at Central Public School in Grimsby, Ontario. They bring maker skills into every aspect of their classroom learning. In Mr. Martin’s words, “Maker education fosters curiosity, tinkering, and iterative learning. I believe firmly that this learning environment ignites enthusiasm for learning, student confidence, and natural collaboration.”
That collaborative environment also fosters empathy, the key trait at the core of the Minimakers’ #STEM4Change idea. Their plan is to use the Make:Change prizes to extend their student-led outreach, bringing STEM education to more and more members of their community.

Notre Dame High School is an innovative, all-girls school in East Toronto. They practice an exceptional focus on STEM skills and work to empower their students to face worldwide challenges head-on. They’ll use the makerspace kit to support their school-wide interdisciplinary project for the year, focused on mental health and student well-being. They’ll also advance their social justice and stewardship projects, collaborate, solve design problems, and support further innovation in their school.
These young innovators are sure to represent the next generation of women leading STEM! To help them on their journey, the high school winners will also take home an HP VR Headset and a Dremmel 3D printer.

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We’re grateful to everyone who submitted a project for the Make:Change contest. Although we had to select only two winners, we’re excited to know that there are so many young minds in Canada working toward projects that will make our world a safer, cleaner, more innovative and accessible place. We’ll be posting their winning submissions later this week so you can take a look. We’d also like to thank our partners from Actua, Fair Chance Learning, and HP Canada. They’re equipping students to make the change they want to see in the world!
To learn about ways you can bring coding and maker skills into the classroom, take a look at our free, online Microsoft MakeCode resources. For more Microsoft tools and resources for the classroom, visit microsoft.ca/education. Courses, lesson plans, and a community of like-minded educators are all available at the Microsoft Educator Community.
Join us as we empower every Canadian school and student to achieve more!

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