It Takes a Spark!

On Wednesday, May 26, the College had the privilege of taking part in Tasmania's first "It Takes a Spark!" EDU Conference. The Conference runs nationwide and aims to bring together students, teachers, experts, and industry leaders working in the STEM fields. 

20 students (from Years 4 to 8) and two teachers made the trip out to Guilford Young College, Glenorchy for a day full of hands-on workshops, engaging presentations, and opportunities to get first-hand experience in a range of STEM careers. Workshops included using coding to improve the lives of people with vision-impairment, programming drones to gather data on penguin habitats, using AI to fight and prevent bushfires, and extracting strawberry DNA (among many, many others). Keynote speakers Dr Stas Shabala and Dr Jennifer Lavers (both from the University of Tasmania) opened our eyes to the incredible possibilities available in the STEM fields, whether as an astrophysicist seeking to understanding the make-up of the universe itself, or as an environmental scientist on a lifelong quest to document and fight the threat of plastic waste to our oceans and wildlife.

A group of seven intrepid Year 7 and 8 students (Phoebe Gatehouse, Eli Ims, Hannah Jager, Imogen Mulder, Aaliyah Onwuegbuzie, Emily Pizzoni and Eleni Roussos) also stepped up to run one of the Problem-Solvers Sessions, an 80-minute creative workshop for both students and teachers. The workshop was based on the STEAM program currently run in Year 6 classes, modelling the principles of Design Thinking through creating and presenting a Well-Being Space for a school community. The students were a credit to themselves and the College community, demonstrating the core skills of leadership, mentoring, and collaboration, and presenting with confidence and clarity. Their efforts were even featured on the evening news bulletin. 

All-in-all, the Conference was an amazing opportunity to broaden our horizons and see the wealth of opportunities in the STEM fields, to showcase some of the learning that is occurring at MCC for the wider educational community, and, most of all, to be inspired to use problem-solving strategies such as Design Thinking to make our world a better place for all.

The Conference was featured on Southern Cross Nightly News, and you can view the clip here:

Our Day Out For STEM !🧬 

It all started when we were walking to the bus - we were so excited we could scream!

For the first session Ruby was in the robot coding challenge by TasNetworks while Carla and Gretel were in virtual vision. The aim for the robot coding challenge was to program the robot to move forward then sense the black sheet of paper then turn right then try to go to the target number 60 without hitting the brick wall. Carla and Gretel were in Virtual Vision and the aim was to help people who are blind so we controlled robots from computers. This challenge came about from a TikTok about a lady who is blind and she uses an app that helps her by taking a photo and then app will tell her what the object is.

After these challenges, we headed off to morning tea. The options were: blueberry muffins, chocolate chip and raspberry muffins, beetroot and chocolate muffins and a two-pack of oat-rolled chocolate chip cookies. All of these were prepared by the students at Guilford Young College.

The next session was the spaghetti and marshmallow transmission tower challenge where we worked together with another school. Firstly we had to come up with a team name and we were told to “think of a team name that first comes into your head” and the the first thing that came into Carla’s head was “chickens”. So it was official, *sigh*, our team name was Chickens!

We thought we would not win because our tower was looking as if it was going to fall, but one very nice man came to help Team Chickens. We took it up to the judges table and they put 7 weights on our spaghetti tower for 2 mins and 23 seconds!!! We were very lucky chickens because we won!!! We couldn't believe it!

Next was lunch. Ruby had a wrap, Carla had salami and cheese and ham and cheese sandwiches and Gretel had a wrap with chicken, pickles, tomatoes and lettuce. 

Next were the Mini Expos. One was showcasing pharmacy and we got to make scented hand cream. The ingredients: sorbolene, Queens food colouring and the choice of three scented oils (lavender, tea tree and rose). Carla and Ruby made one for themselves and one for their mothers and Gretel made one for herself. 

And that was the end of the day. We were lucky to be given a show bag, which included jellybeans, a few stickers, a gel pen, a bottle of water, a notepad and instructions on how to make sherbet. We were all quite sad to leave as we had an amazing time together. 

Ruby Jager, Carla Mione and Gretel Sangwell

Year 4 students