STEAM News

Visit to CapGemini and Microsoft 

Our team for Tech Girls won the state finals for secondary schools in Victoria after lots of planning and hard work. Our win not only filled us with pride and joy, but also gave us the opportunity to attend a conference at Capgemini where we had the chance to share our app’s pitch and connect with professionals in the field. 

The conference was really a fun and inspiring experience, which filled us with lots of useful information. Our team was given the opportunity to present our winning pitch in front of a group of professionals in the tech industry. Being in front of this group, we experienced a blend of excitement and nerves. However, when we began our pitch sharing our process of planning our idea to designing our app, our nerves soothed while talking about something we were so passionate about. Our team received lots of positive feedback and interesting questions during our Q/A. It was really inspiring seeing these professionals genuinely interested in our app and so supportive, believing that it was a great idea that we could even expand into a real app. 

We met a lovely representative from Microsoft, whose job was leading projects and managing people in her specific area. Her expertise was very inspiring, and it was clear that she has a passion for what she does. We were honoured to have had the chance to talk with her, as well as all the other inspiring professionals in the room as well, all encouraging our futures in the STEAM industry. 

During the conference, our team also had the opportunity to tour the Capgemini office and talk with a few workers about their experience working there. This opportunity has not only sharpened all our technical skills, but also has developed our critical thinking skills, as Stacey (our host) said, “…sometimes you have to not look at what is already existing but develop a new and innovative idea to better support people”.  

Our time at this conference was greatly valued and appreciated, moving forward we hope to continue to do these kinds of competitions as a team that worked so well together. We return from this experience with more knowledge and passion for STEAM! 

Marina Radicic 

Year 7 

Lego League Success 

On Saturday the 18th of November, Melbourne Girls’ College participated in the FIRST Lego League Competition against 7 other schools across the state. Hosted on our own school grounds, MGC entered our two teams, Byte our Dust and Mindstormers to compete against the 12 other groups partaking in the competition. With a range of activities and competitors to meet and compete with, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that everybody on the school grounds had a blast.  

Basing all code activities and solutions around a center theme of The Arts, each team presented their innovation projects towards the judges with ideas on how to fix problems ranging from self confidence in dance, to public participation in the arts, and lacking instrumentalist numbers. 

Coding our Lego robots to manually run through series of challenges and obstacles to gain points, tensions were high at the Lego table, where different teams competed against each other for the higher score... all with gracious professionalism of course! 

At the end of the day after careful consideration from the competition judges, the MGC Mindstormers team was lucky enough to walk away from the competition with a fourth-place ranking, which allowed their team to continue onto the Nationals competition which is located in Tasmania! Unfortunately, due to unlucky timing, the Mindstormers had to turn down this opportunity to travel (further) down under. Alongside the Mindstormers opportunity to travel to Tasmania, they also won the Engineering Excellence Award, which is graced upon those who create an efficiently designed robot and an innovation project solution that effectively addresses the center challenge (i.e. The Arts).  

All around, the FIRST Lego League Competition was a fantastic chance for students to show off their problem solving and coding capabilities to each other. We all had a great time participating in this competition and we look forward to competing again in 2024. 

Vivien Dang 

Mindstormers Coder, Year 9 

SPARK Conference 

 On Friday 17th of October, our students enthusiastically participated in the 'It Takes A Spark Conference' organized at John Paul College. The event proved to be an incredible opportunity for students to indulge in various activities ranging from sessions on Dark Matter, Disease Prevention, Design Thinking, and many more. The conference featured several guest speakers from diverse fields in STEM, who shared their insightful experiences and journeys into their careers. Our students received the opportunity to collaborate with multiple other primary and secondary schools, which helped them gain a profound understanding of the field of STEAM. The conference was an enriching experience for all the participants, and we were thrilled to be a part of it. 

Mithuna Karthick 

Middle School STEAM Captain 2023 

BrainSTEM Brilliance  

On Thursday the 16th of November, four year 10 students from MGC travelled to the Royal Society building to showcase their innovative design. The team worked with a mentor from the University of Melbourne to draft their prototype water filter & purifier to provide clean water solutions to people in countries with high rates of water born disease.  

The team gave a well researched report into the factors that affect clean water and the impacts that these have on societies and were confident and charismatic in delivering their findings. The team had worked very hard during a busy time of their year and should be proud of their success. 

 STEAM Captains Report 

It’s been an amazing year for STEAM club at MGC this year! Our students have been hard at work, participating in a range of activities, including Cyber Taipan, First Lego League, First Robotics Competition, Tech Girls, and the Biomechanics Research and Innovation Challenge. Tech Girls and Lego League crowned our MGC students as state winners, state finalists, and regional finalists! Other than our successful year at competitions, we were honoured to have been the hosts of the International Women’s Day Breakfast this year and enjoyed hearing insightful information from our prestigious alumni on STEM careers. We were also privileged enough to run a bake stall with the Interact Club for Science Week, raising nearly $200, and hold a Science Week Trivia for the school community. All of the events and competitions that we ran this year could not have happened without the help of Mrs Keen, Mr Smith, and Ms Cardamone - thank you so much! We really appreciate their help with organising these events for students and the time and effort that goes into it. It has been a fantastic year of STEAM in 2023, and we look forward to an amazing year in STEAM Club in 2024! 

Samira Fiaz and Nandini Vyas 

Senior School STEAM Co-Captains 2023