School Highlights (cont'd)
Year 7 Toy Time Project
Dion Krivonos, Year 7
The Year 7s recently undertook the Toy Time project. Toy Time, a Year 7 STEAM initiative, involves student groups collaborating to design and create a toy that showcases different types of forces in action. Over three weeks, all our classes in Maths, Science and Digital Technology were dedicated to this project.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY COMPONENT
For Digital Technology, we incorporated a MicroBit microprocessor into our design, created an enticing advertisement video and put together a Microsoft Sway presentation highlighting the main points of everything we'd done and accomplished over this period as a group.
MATH COMPONENT
For the Math part, we created a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet outlining the fixed and variable material costs for the toy (which we'd bought through the Science classes’ Toy Time Shop), and analysed the profitability of our toy based on different selling prices and the number of toys that could potentially be sold. The final part of the Math element involved us summing up all this information, showcasing it graphically, and incorporating our business-case analysis into our Microsoft Sway presentation.
SCIENCE COMPONENT
The last part was the Science criteria. This consisted of adding parts to our toy that showed and demonstrated forces and clearly taught others about them. Using Microsoft Sway, we noted down a description of simple machines and the forces our group used. Lastly, we wrote up a detailed plan outlining the steps we undertook to create our toy, along with the measurements.
TOY SHOWCASE
At the end of the three weeks, the students brought their toys together for the Showcase in Dalton Hall. Parents, Junior School students, and a representative from an actual toy company came along and tested our toys. They awarded the 'People’s Choice' and 'Industry Award’ to the students.
Although challenging at times, overall this task was a fun and exciting one!
Year 9 Impact Program and upcoming Walk-a-thon
Jacqui Goldenberg, Community Service Program Director
Recently, I had the pleasure of joining the Year 9s on their Impact Program day. Following two health and wellbeing sessions in the morning (led by Elephant Ed and Toolbox), the afternoon focused on getting those steps up in the lead up to the Year 9 upcoming Walk-a-thon which will be held on Friday September 15.
The Walk-a-thon involves Year 9 students walking from Kilvington to Federation Square in the city to raise money to cover the costs of materials and tools to complete their community service project on their Cape York Immersion expedition.
You are welcome to donate here towards their fundraising initiative.
Bionics Institute Open Day Women in STEM
Louise Macfarlane, Academic Dean of Science
On 16 August, a select group of Year 10 students (Alessia Di Felice, Alycia Liew, Calista Yap and Claire Yu) attended the Bionics Institute as part of their involvement in the Women in STEM program. This Open Day involved talks by senior researchers about their projects and a tour of the research laboratories.
The students were fascinated by the demonstration of transcranial magnetic stimulation as a treatment for Alzheimer’s. They saw fluorescent micrographs of a cat’s cochlea, and enjoyed seeing a high-resolution microscopy of a guinea pig’s foot as part of arthritis research. The demonstration of a device for vagus nerve stimulation as a cure for Crohn’s disease was also most interesting.