STEAM News
Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship
On the first weekend of the school holidays, 6 MGC students attended the second phase of the WISE program run at Monash University, Clayton. These students had made it through to the second round of this competition with the innovative product designs. Over the weekend, the students learned about marketing, finance, leadership, developing business models and how to pitch their idea.
On Sunday afternoon, each of the thirteen finalists had to do their “pitch” to a panel of judges who rated them on all aspects of developing a start-up company. The team of Jess Liu, Niann Lu and Felicia Yang explained and demonstrated their idea for Planta – an app that helps keep your plants a live. They built a prototype model that could sense when a plant needed water and a linked app that could even trigger a pump to water the plant. Unfortunately, team member Rachel Phung was unable to make this weekend event but was also a contributor.
The second team had to wait a long time to present their Hand2Heart prototype which was a glove that could convert finger movements into typed text on a screen. The students, Jade Leung, Vivienne Carey and Felicity Edmondson, had a working model and explained how it could be used to improve communication between people who use sign language and people who don’t understand sign language. Tyana Tsai was on Space Camp for the final competition but was also part of this team.
The judges then conferred for what seemed like forever. They started by giving two honourable mentions and MGC’s Planta team made the list. The judges were very impressed with their working prototype and app.
The prize for the top two teams was a trip to Silicon Valley in the USA to pitch their idea to some start-up companies which is an AMAZING opportunity. Our Hand2Heart team received one of these coveted awards and is off to Silicon Valley in January 2020. The trip is organised by a great organisation called Hacker Exchange
Congratulations to everyone who took part. Your work was amazing
Space Camp 2019
When everyone else was preparing for the Parent/Student/Teacher conferences in term 3, 20 students and 2 teachers were jetting off to the USA for the 2019 Space Camp. The first week involved some visits to some theme parks, iFly and Kennedy Space Centre. The second part of the camp was at the Space Camp at the US Space and Rocket Centre where students were put through their paces.
Our students were placed in teams along with students from other schools and one team, Team Marineris, won the Commander’s Cup for most successful team. Kiara Ciancio-Knauer won the “Right Stuff” award for her approach to each of the challenges.
Congratulation to everyone for a hugely successful camp.
GIST – Girls in STEM Toolkit
The Girls in STEM Toolkit was recently released and is an excellent resource for examining STEM/STEAM and its impact on girls. It is designed for students, schools and families and has lots of great resources. Have a look at the www.gist.edu.au
