Year 9 Discovery Camp

Melb Uni Discovery Yr9

Last week, eleven Year 9 students had the opportunity to participate in the Melbourne University Discovery Camp. It was a fantastic opportunity to visit one of Melbourne’s main Universities and experience life as a Uni student for a day. The excursion also involved Year 9 students from four other schools – McGuire College, Mooroopna Secondary, Wanganui Park and Kyabram P-12.

Emine Avan, Aleyna Aydin, Ashton Hayman, Halil Isguder, Erlwin Licong, Tyleasha Lyons, Abbie Newman, Joy Parnell, Josie Prince Alaa Saadi and Sam Tuliloa, accompanied by Year 9 Assistant Team Leader Robyn Hough, left SHS at 2pm on Thursday to begin our adventure.

We arrived in Melbourne at 6:30pm and were greeted by the organiser of the event Steph Wilson and our student hosts. Our first activity was a delicious dinner made by the chefs of the St Hilda’s College dorm where we stayed.

After dinner we headed out on the 'Amazing Race' challenge where we travelled all around the University Campus finding information and solving puzzles. Tyleasha and Josie were in the winning group and scored a Melbourne Uni keep cup! Ashton and Halil may not have won but they did rock their blue ponchos really well!

After an epic game of Uno played with the student hosts, everyone was off to bed ready for a huge day on Friday.

Friday started with traditional Indigenous Games including Buroinjin. We also got to see and feel a traditional Buroinjin ball made of possum skin and coal.

After the games we went to the Physics faculty where we saw all kinds of science experiments that almost seemed like magic, except it was science, including shrinking balloons with liquid nitrogen.

We visited the Dental lab where we all had the chance to try our co-ordination removing plaque to do a filling on the simulator machines. We learnt that dental students start on those machines really early in their course and they can simulate almost any dental procedure to learn how to do it before performing it on a real patient. Some of our students showed great skill at the simulators and revealed a potential future as a dentist.

Many students favourite was the Biomedical lab where we were able to perform ECGs on other students, listen to heart beats with a stethoscope and also explore a human heart with a virtual reality activity where you could look inside the heart, pull the heart apart and reassemble.

Our last stop was the Engineering Department where we learnt about sustainable environments and how engineer’s incorporate many different considerations when they are creating their designs including the environment they are in, the resources available and the communities who will be affected.

The students were challenged to build a model of a house for people who lived in Cambodia near a river that floods every wet season. They had $40 to spend and after having time to design their house, could choose to purchase plastic cups, paddle pop sticks, straws, string, sticky tape and balloons. The idea was that their house could float in a tub of water and hold as many marbles as possible. There were some interesting ideas with one group creating a model that held 102 marbles. There were some others that did not work quite so well. After the first round, the students received another $20 to buy equipment to adjust their models and see if they could improve them. Most groups were able to improve on the number of marbles their house could hold in the second round.

It was a fantastic opportunity for the students to experience different aspects of university life and explore future possible careers they may not have already considered.

Our group would like to thank Mary-ann Linehan for organising this excursion and making it possible for the students to have this experience as well as the opportunity to spend time with and make friends with people from other schools.

It was a great trip and we would all highly recommend it to next the Year 9’s for next year.

Robyn Hough

Year 9 Asst Team Leader