Hidden Talent

This week we are celebrating a newly discovered tech talent with the lovely Rhiannon Kelly of Year 10. 

Rhiannon participated in a statewide Coronavirus Youth Design Challenge organised by Young Change Agents (YCA) in conjunction with Yarra Ranges Tech School, Telstra and Monash Tech School. The challenge asked young people ‘How might we support those that have been impacted by the Coronavirus, now and in the future?’

We caught up with Rhiannnon after the challenge finals to ask a few questions:

First things first, congratulations Rhiannon! Third place is an incredible achievement!

Thank you, I am still a little speechless myself.

For those who don’t know much about what you have been up to, can you tell us a little bit about your project and how you came up with the idea?

I chose to develop an app, “Study Synch”, in response to the question put to us by the competition organisers. My project was based on my own personal experience. The last lot of remote learning I struggled a lot with staying on top of my work. I also struggled to manage time effectively and found I would be overworking in some subjects and not enough in others.

The idea of my project was to help students and teachers manage their workload and know how much work they are doing. It has quick access to a class group chat, so you can ask questions of the whole class and the teacher. I know that in normal class situations sometimes you might ask the person sitting next to you a question, but learning from home doesn’t really allow that, so I thought that would be a cool feature to have in the app. It also has alarms built in that would replace “school bells” to help remind you of when to take breaks and change subjects. There are also quick links to mental health services and sites.

What did the design process look like?

It all started as a lesson in our Science class during the first lot of remote learning. We drew up little prototypes and submitted them to the Young Change Agents. They looked through all the submissions across Victoria and picked out the projects they felt would make good finalists. My project was lucky enough to be selected, I was a bit shocked when I found out.

Since returning to remote learning for the second time, the finalists had two zoom meetings/workshops where we would discuss general things as a group, but we would also break off into our teams to work on our projects. Obviously for me I was working in a team on my own, but that was fine. Our teachers and mentor also joined us. We would bounce between the main group with all the contestants, to get instructions for the next step, and then break out again to work on our ideas. It was sort of split up into little sections.

Towards the end we got the Telstra mentors in and they gave us support with the technical side of things, which was really helpful because I had no clue about that sort of stuff, and they were also just another person to speak to about your project. It was really about refining your idea and making it a bit more advanced and also taking on the feedback that you would get along the way.

Ms Benham also popped in and out of my workshops when she wasn’t teaching and was able to give me some feedback from a teachers point of view, which was helpful because I was always looking at things from a student’s point of view.

What did it feel like to bring your idea to life?

It was quite scary if I am honest. I think that because I was the only student from Healesville and I was in a team on my own, when I first arrived, I was thinking oh gosh am I going to be overwhelmed? but it just gradually started to take shape.

It was scary but at the same time I was really pleased with myself, because managing my work was something I had struggled with last time. Having this challenge broken into set times and smaller steps, I thought hang on, I can do this and I just kept going.

I am actually really proud of myself, because I managed to be productive with it and stay on track.

Is this something you might like to pursue in the future?

I don’t think this is something that I would necessarily make a career out of, I am more of a creative person rather than a technical person, but I definitely had fun.

What skills did you learn along the way?

I think confidence in myself and my idea was probably the biggest things I learned. I was in a team on my own, so I really needed to believe in what I was doing. I knew my idea was really good and I also found out from the other finalists that I wasn’t the only one who would benefit from having something like this available.