Around The College

Global Convention DareCon!

Attended by Y10 German students

How do you imagine your future? That was the central question at the global virtual convention DareCon! organised by the German Goethe-Institut last weekend. Together with young people studying German from Australia, New Zealand, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Germany, Erin Ibrahim, Tara Metaxas, Jacinta Adams and Brendan Davies were able to work on projects in various digital workshops and were able to give their generation a voice. DareCon! was a 100% digital convention with workshops for young people from all these countries. Participants tuned in from their home. They worked with and got to know young people from around the world. The workshop language was mainly English, but students also used German where they could. We would like to congratulate Erin, Tara, Jacinta and Brendan for their very successful participation in this amazing event. You did an outstanding job representing Team Australia and we are very impressed how calmly and confidently you presented to people from all over the world. You were great ambassadors for Brentwood and Australia, and we are very, very proud of you! Please see below their individual reports, team photo, and the cultural video they created with all members from Team Australia. The video introduced Australia, but also talk about challenges we might face in the future. 

Dorothea Bruns

Head of Languages

DareCon! report by Erin Ibrahim, Tara Metaxas, Jacinta Adams and Brendan Davies

On the nights from Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th, we attended the Goethe Institut’s DareCon! conference. We were a part of the Australian team – around 10 people from across the country (4 of which were from Brentwood!). Other countries involved included New Zealand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, The Philippines, and of course, Germany. It is very difficult to sum up what our experience was like, as it varied vastly from person to person, depending on what key focus area they looked into. We can, however, explain our collective experiences: 

The Saturday and Sunday nights, despite being twice as long as the first, were more engaging, as we split off into groups and began working on our individual projects. We experienced German techno-pop music on Saturday night, and engaged in connecting with all others in the conference. We certainly have got to know new people from all over the world! 

Writing in pictures – envisioning your future through visual storytelling - Erin 

The ‘Writing in Pictures’ workshop led by Beldan Sezen, was an engaging and innovate experience for the artists of DareCon! to challenge their artistic and aesthetic skills in portraying world problems through an insightful and structured comic story. We began our weekend with sketching and drawing objects in our surroundings, as well as a few characters, to familiarise ourselves with what style we have and show Beldan our capabilities as artists. Prior to DareCon!, we were asked what topics we were interested in and would like to discuss throughout the workshop – which was a guide as to which students had a similar perspective or interest in the world. After being divided into pairs, we began sharing a problem that our nation faces and the outcome that would be most ideal; as well as how our society may reach that scenario. The issue I was tasked with was to transform the dishonesty of online manufacturing companies in Myanmar. By communicating with Beldan Sezen frequently and constructing a detailed idea of how the comic was going to come together, I was able to complete my draft on the first day of workshop activity. 

The second day of the workshop centred around the completion of our drafted stories, as well as the production of the finalised copy. This required us to redraw or trace the previous panels and present them creatively to be captivating to the audience. I redrew and reordered my panels from the draft, to ensure the flow in the storyline remained consistent. My comic became a short flip book, which was decided as it would give the reader the opportunity to physically hold the medium and be captivated by the story. We then presented our artworks to the rest of the participants in other workshops, explaining our process and opinions on the weekend overall. I found the experience of working with a talented and self-taught illustrator to be an opportunity that has allowed me to have a deeper understanding and greater appreciation for the work and process that involves making a comic – and that it is more than the drawings and text bubbles that makes the work meaningful. 

Interconnected Worlds – Tara and Jacinta 

The Interconnected Worlds workshop was a comprehensive virtual reality program offered by helpers from Jugendhackt. Guided by mentors and collaborating with peers, each group was tasked with coding a virtual world to be used as an online forum to promote creativity and comfort, experience what exchange can look like in virtual worlds, and work on our visions for the future. This workshop began by splitting off into a few small groups for a more collaborative experience with our international peers. Introductions over video call aided in connecting with the lives, interests and people overseas. On Sunday, focus was placed on enhancing our virtual worlds, which we were predominately creating on Tiled, an easy to use VR tool. Using a tile set designed by one of the team members, we were able to fill our worlds with parks, beaches, sporting centres and rooms with as many weird furniture and objects as we liked. 

By Sunday afternoon, the workshop presentations came around and we were able to share all our worlds with the DareCon! team. One of our favourite parts was watching people explore the completed online worlds through their avatars, and recognising the hard work everyone put into designing their VR creations.  

Artificial Intelligence and our Future – Brendan 

Of the Australians, quite a few were in this group. We covered topics such as pros and cons of AI, what its implications were and (to some degree) how it works. We tried training an algorithm that recognises handwritten numbers (but my batch of samples was rubbish, as after thousands of them had been processed, I had <20% accuracy with others at >80% with half the samples!) 

This group also got onto some rather odd discussions, such as the superiority of the German electrical plug (to which I responded to by putting together a ‘power point’ presentation of our wall plugs) and had some break music (which became a music-off). One thing that has stuck with me from that workshop is that AI is good for one thing and one thing only – the thing it was developed for (and even that could be messed up by shonky training). 

Year 7 Science - Bunsen Burner Licences!