Melbourne Girls' College

STEAM News

TechGirls Competition

Each year, the Techgirls Movement Foundation runs an Australia-wide competition for girls ages 7-17 to engage in STEM.  The program combines problem-solving through a social, business and technical lens, producing high-quality business plans, pitch videos and working app prototypes. This year, most of the work was done remotely, via Teams, making everything so much harder!

This year, Melbourne Girls’ College entered 4 teams, our largest group ever. When the finalists were announced, each of our four teams had made it through to the finals!

The entries in the girls’ own words were:

Shopwell

ShopWell informs the user about fast fashion/sweatshops, animal testing, and ethically sourced food. It shows which stores use unethically sourced products in each category. It can also provide some alternative shops which sell the same items but are properly created/sourced. In the future, we hope to have a map that would show the user which way to go to get there. We also hope to have a feature that allows the users to submit to other shops which provide ethically sourced products.

 

Team members: Alex McCurry, Claudia Bellsmith, Samira Fiaz, Sienna Virtuoso, Alysa Broszczyk

Shop Spot

The beating heart of every community is local businesses. And during COVID-19, this heart slowed. Family businesses were shut down, staff were let go... Without local businesses, our communities die. The Steamites want to resuscitate our communities. Through our platform, small business owners can connect directly with locals to spread the word of special deals and events. Our platform will restore communities, and if anything, strengthening them.

 

Team members: Al Pilepich, Nandini Vyas, Chloe McCormick, Max Cooper, Giselle Scott

En-abled

Our group decided to make an app that helps people with physical or other disabilities locate places that can cater to their needs, our app gives people in the special needs community means of interaction and fun. The app has a wide range of events from wheelchair-accessible art exhibitions to A skate day where they give skateboarding lessons to people with autism. Being able to interact and hang out with others is a human right that we all deserve. Even big organizations like the NDIS are trying to help build a bridge between our community and the special needs community. Hopefully, this app can lend a hand in getting us to that goal.

 

Team members: Phemie Macgregor, Myra Kumar, Dimathi GANEACHCHI, Audrey Farina, Neesha Sackett

Accomplished

Accomplished is an app that helps people to connect with the wider community. Most young people do not know what clubs and activities are out there, which leads to them not participating. When young people realize all the amazing opportunities out there, they can join in, make friends, and overall become happier, better people. But Accomplished doesn’t only help young people connect with the community, it helps the community connect with young people. Launching activities and clubs can be exhausting, especially when you don’t know where to start. With Accomplished, new clubs and activities can get the word out, acquire patrons, and flourish. Accomplished is an app that helps the community, by connecting young people to activities that nurture their abilities and sharing the news about up-and-coming clubs and organizations.  

Team members: Hannah Jenney, Freya Thompson, Pepa White, Alexandra Pope, Giselle Scott

At the awards ceremony

  • Our ShopWell team won a UN Sustainable Development Goal award for their app
  • Our Shop Spot Team won a Highly commended award for Victoria
  • and finally our En-Abled app won the Victorian state award. 

Congratulations to every student who participated. 

If you would like to see the entries of all of our teams, please visit https://www.techgirlsmovement.org/competition/2021-techgirls-competition-national-winners/

 

FIRST Lego League

It is certainly tough to code your robot to do certain tasks when you are at home and don’t have access to all the materials you need. The Lego League competition is going to be a remote event this year and will be held on the 28th of November. Will our teams be ready? Will any teams be ready?

Inspiring STEM+ Program

Our collaboration with Laing O’Rourke Construction has been a very rocky road with very few of the planned modules and site visits actually happening. We hope to have a final session with the current group before the end of the year, if we are permitted to have visitors in site.

Look out for an announcement about a future opportunity for our current Year 8 and 9 students to get some experience in the engineering fields.