STEM News
STEM MAD (Making a Difference) Showcase
We are so proud of all the Year 5 students for their amazing and innovative designs for this year's STEM MAD (Making a Difference) Showcase. Even though we could only take two groups through we had seven finalists to choose from! The two groups that represented St Mary’s at the Melbourne STEM MAD Showcase were:
The CCM - Climate Change Machine was designed by Zale, Andrew & Mason who created a remote controlled machine which drills, dispenses seeds, waters, fertilizes and tests soil to help with regeneration of plants and trees. The students prototype is made using mechanical lego and is battery operated and includes seed chutes, seed conveyor belt, soil cultivator and sprinkler. The driver behind this project was to address the issues of deforestation, fossil fuel usage and climate change.
The M.A.S. (Marine Animal Sensor), designed by Henry, Athan and Cooper, is a device designed to help protect marine life from vessel strikes. It is a sensor system, attached to the bow of boats, which utilises sonar technology to identify potential obstructions underwater and to notify the navigator. An underwater camera provides secondary, visual verification as required. After sending a warning, M.A.S alerts the navigator to change course and divert around the obstruction.
During the Showcase, our students were interviewed by judges and other participants, participated in a live video and radio interview and had the opportunity to visit other student’s designs from all over Melbourne. We also managed to squeeze in a bit of fun with a photobooth session, viewing future STEM resources, including speaking to Peppa the robot, and having a surprise gelato treat to end the day!
You can check out their interviews in the links below:
The video showcase link for all the designs: https://vimeo.com/showcase/9735252
We are also proud to announce that the CCM group - Zale, Andrew and Mason - have been invited to the National STEM Showcase on September 8th at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre as they were nominated as finalists for the Technology Integration Award!
Congratulations to all the students who participated!
Evelyn Whatmore (R.E. & Curriculum Leader) & Thomasine Cook (ICT Coordinator)
STEM Showcase Student Reflections
Stem MAD (Making a Difference) was an amazing experience full of lots of challenges. It all began as an automatic basic tree planter. We tossed and turned on whether we liked it or not. After tinkering a lot there we were at Stem Mad. We were super excited to explore the other students' ideas and thoughts. We even loved the nervous part talking to the judges. Additionally we had heaps of fun. Overall my favourite parts were when we met a robot named Peppa, got free icecream, getting a video interveiw and getting a super cool radio interview on live FM. It was so cool! We had microphones and a set of headphones and a guy named Ralph asked us some questions about our designs. Still,I couldn’t help but breathing into the mike. As for the robot Peppa they told us that he came from France and could speak many languages. We ended up busting some moves with Peppa as it played music. We loved exploring and taking the public transport with each other. Overall we all had an extraordinary time exploring, eating, getting interviewed, dancing with robots and eating icecream. To top it off we got a very cool drink bottle. By: Zale A
STEM MAD (Making a Difference) was an amazing learning opportunity because Athan, Cooper and I learnt so much during this project like how sound underwater affects the echolocaton animals with navigation and feeding. The other fun parts about the day were getting free gelato, being interviewed by judges and Ralph, the co host of the event. We also got to go on live FM radio. The ideas of the other students were amazing and we had loads of fun exploring, engineering and designing our projects. We got to meet a very special humanoid robot Peppa and asked the no gendered robot some questions like, what is it like to be a robot and we even got to play some games on it like Among Us (it wasn’t what you think) and it was really exciting. By: Henry T
STEM CLUB CHALLENGE - by Abby Jebb
The STEM leaders and Mrs Whatmore have organized a STEM club challenge which the years 3-6 participated in this week. Their goal was to make the tallest tower they could out of 20 spaghetti sticks, tape and string. They also had to make their towers strong enough to support a marshmallow. Dillan B and Ellie S (from year 6) made the tallest tower ‘The Car Crash’ which reached the height of 50cm. Also Eva T and Tess B (also from year 6) made a tower with the most creative design ‘The Tower of Swagger’ which resembled a ship. The years preps to 2 will compete in the same challenge next week.
