innovation revolution
Rohan McCarthy
Head of Learning - English
Literacy Leader
Congratulations to the BSC Year 7 cohort who staged the 2018 Innovation Expo.
Attended by a record number of visitors including families, staff and students from across all year levels, the Innovation Expo was the culmination of the Year 7 students' cross-curricula project work and a chance for the school community to share in their success.
Working across the Science, Humanities, Maths and English Learning Areas, students were charged with the challenge of inventing a product or idea. To support their project, students had to acquire and apply the skills and knowledge needed to develop, cost and market their idea.
- Humanities - students learned about ethics and sustainability
- Mathematics - students learned how to cost and demonstrate break-even points in production
- Science - students learned how to design and prototype ideas and products
- English - students learned persuasive language and writing skills in order to sell their product
At the Expo, the students rose to the challenge of marketing their product to the public, fielding questions from visitors about all facets of the execution of their project. The diversity of ideas and products presented by the Year 7 students was truly breathtaking - providing visitors with much to admire, discuss and to explore.
S t r e t c h Buddy
Carah Long &
Chiara Aldridge
Year 7
Year 7 students at Brunswick Secondary College have had the amazing opportunity in Term 1 of working on Innovation Projects. We had to work as a pair or by ourselves to make a new invention or product to solve a problem. To complete this project, we had to work in all our core subjects including Humanities, Science, Maths and English. We had to work in all 4 subjects to make a cohesive presentation while fulfilling the criteria of each section of the assessment task.
We worked on our project together to create a fully working app - the Stretch Buddy - an app to help people stretch safely. We made prototypes, graphs, scientific diagrams and product pitches in the lead up to our final product. When making our product it came with overall challenges, like our app program constantly deleting our work as well as other technical difficulties. The key was never giving up and trying over and over again until it worked.
The English part of the Innovation Expo was creating a product pitch to try and sell our product - Stretch Buddy - to our class. We learned about the different marketing and persuasion techniques that are needed to convince an audience to buy a product. We then used these skills to help us write our product pitch speech. We also learned about how to deliver the speech - for example, making eye contact, modulating tone and pace and projecting our voice (so the audience could hear clearly) and using gestures to engage the audience. The reason I think we did all of this work was so when it got to the actual Innovation Expo night we knew how to sell our product. We used snippets of our speech to convince the parents, grandparents and community members who attended the evening, to buy our product as we showed it to them. It was a really enjoyable event.
Peace Patches
Peace is just a Patch away
Sienna Calvani
Year 7
The maths component of the Innovation Project was very interesting and taught me a variety of skills that could be applied to real life situations. Some of the skills I enjoyed learning were using formulas in Excel, the beginning of Financial Math, cost, revenue and profit. It was an interesting unit that I would definitely further explore!
Tas Michael
Head of Learning - Mathematics
The Maths component of the Innovation project involved students examining the costs involved in the development and production of their product. By using formulas in an Excel spreadsheet, students could display the effect that different cost and price scenarios had on profit. Students could then determine whether their product was a sound investment.
Pro Writing
Don't smudge your Creativity
Sam Richards
Year 7
Not only was the Innovation Expo project really fun but it stretched out into 4 whole subjects.
One of those subjects was Maths, where we were tasked with budgeting our product. This included making a profit and finding a price break-even point, which is where you identify how many products you would have to sell to make a profit.
I personally loved the Innovation Project and learned a lot. One specific skill I learned was using formulas in Microsoft Excel in order to automate mathematical calculations. In my opinion, the Maths component was one of the most important factors of the project!
Shang Wang
Head of Learning - Science
On the night of the Innovation Expo, creativity was in abundance and the Science faculty was proud to have played a part in supporting the students in making their ideas come to life.
We centered the student project around a process called “the engineering cycle” where students would create a prototype, trial it and collect data from the trails to further improve their designs. Teachers on the night were very excited to see students put their understanding of the engineering cycle on display. All the students came up with amazing ideas and it was great to see them confidently explaining how their designs evolved over the engineering cycle.
Well done to all students and teachers who were involved on the project.
How Humanities helps...
Charlotte Horner
Year 7
For the Humanities portion of the Innovation project, we focused on the environmental and sustainable aspect of making a product. We looked at which materials are renewable and non-renewable, which gave us an insight into what renewable materials are already there for us to use.
In Humanities, we also designed logos for our companies and product, which I thought was a great creative activity. I thought it was a great way to express our product goals and what we wanted our brands to represent.
Overall, I thought that the Humanities portion was very insightful and