Gifted Education Program News

Tournament of Minds

The 2021 TOM season is almost over. Our three Primary teams and six Secondary teams wrapped up their preparations last week. Because of the restrictions imposed on large gatherings, teams were required to film their solutions to the challenges and submit these along with their script. Filming took place from Wednesday to Saturday last week. Some teams chose to film in one 10-minute video while others used various locations, creating a number of individual scenes. The boys then needed to put their editing skills to use to bring the different sections together. One of the disappointing aspects of this type of submission is the inability of teams to participate in the Spontaneous Challenge. Our teams are always very good at this and definitely miss the opportunity to test their creative thinking processes against other teams.

Programs such as Tournament of Minds take a lot of energy and we couldn’t nominate nine teams without the generosity of a wonderful group of people. I am so grateful for the time given to this program by a number of amazing staff and senior students who support, encourage, guide and manage the boys along the course of the preparation period. Sincere thanks to Ms Robyn Brown, Mr Andrew Devoy, Mrs Bonita Gerry, Ms Judith Jones, Mrs Prue Maclean, Mrs Anntoinette Restell and Miss Clara Sandona. This year we benefited from the outstanding leadership of a group of senior students who shared their experience and expertise with the younger boys – Sam Allpass 11G, Zac Apelt 11D, Wil Canning 11G, James Gurr 11S, Eamon Madden 12G, Finn McDougall 11F and Tomas Ruiz 11I. They should be very proud of the leadership they displayed and for giving back to a program in which they have been involved for many years. Thank you so much gentlemen.

CyberTAIPAN

On Sunday 12 September, our three cybersecurity teams toiled for six hours to analyse three images, find vulnerabilities and implement corrections. With 132 teams competing, our teams finished in 8th, 11th and 58th positions. Our most experienced team identified and fixed 57 of the 61 issues; our second-most experienced team also corrected 57 issues. New to the program this year, our Year 9 team gained much experience in correcting 39 of the problems. They will definitely be better prepared for the next round which is scheduled for the first weekend of Term 4.

Sincere thanks to our coach, Mr Adam Graham, and congratulations to the 13 young men who train each Friday for this national competition.