Student Voice
House Music Showtime
Students in years 3-6 have been learning a dance led by the house captains for House Music Showtime all on Term 2. House Captains choose the music and taught the dances each week and performed on the last day of Term 2. This year our winning house was Nelson. Each house should be so proud of their achievements.
Go Girls, Go for IT Event
On 13th August, a group of Year 5/6 girls went to Deakin University for a girls in STEM event. It was called Go Girls, Go for IT. This year's theme was ‘inspireHER - Creating a Bold Future with AI’. At the start, when we arrived at the University, we received lanyards and had a Welcome Ceremony where three different people talked about the importance of the event, STEM and AI. We then made our way to our first workshop.
Workshop One
The first workshop was run by two ladies from Kinetic IT and we talked about the benefits and risks of AI as well as AI fails and wins. Some examples of AI fails were autocorrect disasters, chatbot racism, Google translate errors and smart speaker eavesdropping. Examples of AI wins include helping detect cancer, translating between languages in real time and paralysed people controlling computers with their thoughts. We then learnt about four women who have had a big impact in the world of AI. Regina Barzilay made AI models that can predict someone’s risk of developing breast cancer and help in earlier, more accurate cancer diagnosis.
Tradeshow
Our second activity for the day was to attend a ‘Tradeshow’. This was an exhibition set up by many businesses. Each business had a stall. Some of the businesses were NAB, ANZ, Macquaire, Tennis Australia, Girl Geek Academy, RoboGals, RealEstate.Com and Pika. We went around to the stalls and learnt about how each business works and how it uses AI and technology. Sadly, after a while, our adventure at the ‘tradeshow’ came to an end.
Keynote Speaker
After the tradeshow, we went to the Keynote presentation in a large lecture theatre. The keynote speaker was Dayle Stevens who is the head of AI at Telstra. She talked about her jobs as a newsagent sales assistant, working at a cafe, CSR, Origin Energy and then eventually Telstra. Dayle also talked about what she does at Telstra, including fun things like using AI to program Christmas Santa on pay phones. Did you know they have an AI driven interrupting elf who is programmed to recognise when callers tell Santa bad things and hangs up the call? Dayle also got to meet the Queen as she was recognised for her contribution to mentoring women in STEM! Dayle shared her top tips for succeeding in STEM:
- #1 Find your passion!
- #2 Use your courage!
- #3 Indulge in curiosity!
- #4 Share the kindness forward!
- And the best one is, DREAM BIG!
Workshop Two
Our final workshop was run by Carsales and discussed the pros and cons of AI. As an icebreaker we were split into 4 groups by tables and selected a problem and worked towards a solution using AI. After all the groups had shared their problem and solution, we all discussed why their solution might not work. After that, we got to experiment with chat gpt and made some funny songs. Then we went back to school. It was one of the best excursions ever!
