SEAL and the High Ability Program News

The SEAL and High Ability students have had a fantastic start to the year! The Year 7 SEAL students, in particular,  should be very proud of how they have settled into Year 7 life and taking on the challenges of a SEAL student.

This term we have three Year 8 students involved in the Enhanced Maths portion of the Victorian High Ability Program – Aiden Turker, Krishkarandeep Sondh and Ryder Vo.  The students have been enjoying the program and the different Maths problem solving skills that they are developing whilst doing so.

Six Year 9 students have started the Emerging Sciences Program which is an advanced online Science program that runs for the whole semester.  Aqeel Hussain and Jack Proctor are undertaking studies in Astrophysics whilst Ashmina Zygaldo in Bioiformatics.  Mia Amidzic, Vivien Tang and Talia Atar are also undertaking a study in Neuroscience.  We look forward to hearing more information from these students in coming weeks about these exciting programs. 

Aiden Turker was also given the opportunity to participate in Moon Camp at Scienceworks over the summer break which was part of the School of Excellence Program.  He has contributed an insight into his experiences below. Well done Aiden!

Jodie Purches

Innovations & Excellence Learning Specialist

Moon Base Camp 

Scienceworks, Melbourne January 12 & 13 2022

The moon base camp was an opportunity for students across Victoria to learn more about the moon with the aim of designing a suitable future moon base. After being rescheduled several times due to Covid, the camp was held at Melbourne Scienceworks on 12th and 13th of January 2022.  Prior to the Camp we had to do some preparation work and watch several tutorials to familiarise ourselves with two main programs: Tinkercad and CoSpaces. 

Both these are 3D imaging programs with Tinkercad being a program designed for 3D printing and Cospaces, a program designed for creating 3D animations.

On the first day we learnt about the conditions on the moon and how to deal with them to make a suitable living environment. We also learnt about the features that had to be incorporated into our design to make our base. This work on the first day became the basis for our design brief. We were formed into pairs to create a draft design on paper as a plan for the next day. This part of the camp was great as I got to meet and get to know others and form some friendships. There were more than 20 other students who came to the camp from as far as Gippsland to as close as Williamstown.

The second day was centered around creating the moon base design using Cospaces, Tinkercad and out of materials supplied by Scienceworks. This was great as we got an entire day to create our moon base from the briefs created the day before. When we finished our moon base, we presented it to the rest of the group. When we had some free time, we were free to explore Scienceworks and for recess and lunch we were given vouchers for the canteen and even access into a special exhibition. 

I very appreciative about this opportunity and really enjoyed the camp and everything about it. My favorite things about the moon base camp were meeting new people and collaborating with them, learning about the moon and having complete freedom in developing the solution from the beginning and getting to solve the problems independently. The moon base camp was an excellent experience and I feel extremely fortunate to have attended. I would recommend it to anyone if you ever got the chance to attend.