Tournament of the Minds

This term, a team of students from Doncaster Secondary College joined 220 other schools from around Victoria to take part in the 2021 Tournament of Minds.

The Tournament of Minds requires students to select from one of four set challenges in the areas of STEM, Social Sciences, Language and Literature or the Arts, and create a 10-minute presentation of a solution to this challenge.

The challenge was set at the start of Term 3 and the team had 6 weeks to develop their solution which they were then to present to a panel of judges at Deakin University. However, the team faced an additional challenge when we moved back into remote learning and they had to work out how they were going to meet, plan, adapt and film their presentation by the submission date.

I have been absolutely blown away by the teamwork, resilience, dedication and creativity of these students. 

The team, named “Millionaire Cold Seat”, chose the Social Sciences challenge and were asked:

“What would past generations think of the issues we now face and how we are attempting to solve them?” 

They were required to have a ‘conversation’ with 4 people from the past on a common global issue that had affected them all in some way. The students prepared game-show style that hosted infamous figures from history such as Marie Currie, Galileo, Eddie Mabo and Nelson Mandela and quizzed them about their fights for equality.

The students composed and played their own music for the credits of the game show, practiced and perfected accents and filmed their 10-mintue video all in a matter of weeks. Their final product was amazing! 

Congratulations to Alexander P (7E), Abbey M (8E), Oliver Dean (8E), Nikola P (8E), Soumavo P (8E) and Anthony S (10K)

Our team have provided their reflections below.

Ms Fiona Cowan

High-Ability Practice Leader

The experience was great, it was a fun and an engaging learning experience with a challenging topic. I learned a lot about civil rights activists and important historical figures in a very interactive format.

Nikola P., 8E

I really loved this experience, I got to meet fun smart kids from all year levels and make new friends. I also managed to submit an incredible and interesting response to the challenge we were given. I enjoyed being able to have a good time and improve different skills as well as doing something I have never done before. It was a great experience, and I learnt a lot. It was also a very good opportunity to collaborate with other people and increase my leadership skills. I am so glad I did it. 

Alexander P., 7E

I loved being able to participate in Tournament of Minds this year, it was a great experience and I really enjoyed it. I got to connect with people, and we worked well together to make a fun entry to the competition. One of my favourite parts was listening to everyone’s accents and being able to take a lot of initiative.

Abbey M., 8E

I really enjoyed it, it was really fun and a great experience even if it was on video. It really helped my organisation and my general knowledge. It was a great way to stay in tune with people over lockdown and everyone worked really well to meet the deadline.

Ollie D., 8E