STEM MAD – Nationals 2022

Since the last DTE/STEM newsletter article we learnt that three of our teams made it through to the National STEM Mad finals held on 6 September at the Melbourne Convention Centre. These groups were the MyMedSecure team of Madeline Russell, Amelie Baker and Aathira Binoy, the R.E.A.D app team with Sophie Chapman, Matilda Exton and Charlotte Bone and the Diabetes Insulin Flap team consisting of Lily Barclay, Zara Solomon, Emma Greaney and Larasati Kett. All of these teams were Year 7 students, so we clearly have some budding STEM innovators poised to make a difference in the lives of others!

We are also thrilled to announce that the MyMedSecure team were awarded best assistive device on the day. Well done, everyone!

Go Girls Go for IT conference

On 18 July our Year 8 Tech Angel team headed off to Deakin University to attend the Go Girls, Go for IT conference. This conference, which aims to address the inequity of women in IT careers, had all kinds of events from guest speakers, roving robots, sessions with representatives from TPG and the much-loved showcase where students filled their goody bags with lots of IT related swag!

Student Reflections

The highlights of the day at the Go Girls, Go for IT conference at Deakin University included the trade show because we got free things. However, we also learned about the different companies and the work they do in the IT world. Another highlight for me was the workshop where a uni student came and talked about the film industry. After the end of the day, all the things I did were great. I learnt more about IT that I did not know before. 

Charlotte Forbes
Year 8

The highlight of the day for me was exploring the university and seeing all of the different occupations that involve IT. It was very informative and was very interesting and intriguing.

Lauren Vong
Year 8

Year 12: Data Analytics

Our Year 12 students are rapidly coming to the end of their Kilbreda Data Analytics journey. They have officially finished all their SATs and SACs for the year and are now focusing their full attention on exam preparation. This term, we have been blessed with two amazing guest speakers bringing the ‘real world’ to our classroom. We were joined by Ms Sothis Palaniyappan from TPG who taught us (almost) everything there is to know about how fibre-optic cabling connects the world! We also had Mr Camera giving us his fascinating talk on Disaster Recovery Plans and their importance for a business. We wish them all the best for their mock exams during the holidays!

Year 11

Our Year 11 students have been working hard all term on their ‘Innovative Solutions’ project for U2O1. This project is a hands-on unit, where students can choose an IT related topic that they are interested in to explore in detail. Our students, worked together as a group to create ‘STEM Island’ (a parody on some of the more well-known reality TV shows). Students built the island, including setting up solar panels for electricity and watering, and 3D printing various parts for the island. They designed a Virtual Reality version of the house for the contestants, created the accompanying website and even created the first episode of ‘STEM Island;’ using modern moving making technologies such as drones and green screening.

Student Reflection: Innovative Solutions

This term, the Year 11 Applied Computing class commenced our studies on ‘Innovative Solutions’. This outcome focuses on carefully crafting a solution for a need or opportunity, while collaborating with our peers as a group to analyse, design, develop and evaluate our innovative solution. Additionally, each group member had to incorporate a different digital system into their solution. As a class, we collectively agreed that the lack of women involved in STEM, especially in the IT industry, is a monumental issue in our world, and so we agreed that the need for women in STEM would be resolved through ‘STEM Island’.

As a small class of five, we decided that being in one big group would be more efficient given that each one of us was quite fond of the concept. Essentially, ‘STEM Island’ was a game show in which each of us was a character, all focused on different digital systems, and throughout this show, we would complete different IT-related challenges, in the hopes of being the winner. 

My role in this task was the creation of the VR Island, whilst others in my class worked on creating websites, filming episodes, and constructing an eco-friendly, physical version of the island and printing 3D objects to accompany the island. ‘Blender’ was the software I used to create the island, while I also utilised all the tutorials YouTube had to offer. This task, surprisingly, took a lot of research to even get the basics of ‘Blender’ down pat. Despite my lack of artistic skills, the design component of this task was still highly enjoyable, but the most enjoyable moment was definitely the completion of the entire house. After working so hard on constructing and piecing together the house, seeing it all come together was hands down one of the most satisfying moments of my life!

Though this project had seen its fair share of problems, the final product made it all worth it. I loved being able to explore two areas (architecture and VR) that I would never have been able to explore without this subject and also the fact that I was able to have some creative freedom in an assessment, which is something that I lack in many of my other subjects. 

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed working on our innovative solution and eventually getting to showcase our individual projects to the class at the end. Experience with computing and IT is insignificant when it comes to doing VCE Applied Computing, so if this has sparked your interest, I highly recommend you consider taking this subject; it is a decision you won’t regret.

Angelique Vargheese
Year 11

Year 7

Year 7 students have been taking the leap from block-based coding in Scratch to text-based coding using Python. They have been designing and coding their own animals using co-ordinates, and a variety of functions such as goto(), penup(), pendown(), fillcolor(), circle() and rectangle().

Student Reflection

This term we have been focusing on coding and during the last part of Term 3, we learnt how to write lines of code in Python programming. It was super interesting to learn something new and exciting, as it was something the whole class had never done before. I was intrigued to see how everything is done and was surprised when I found I got the hang of it pretty quickly.

When it came to our assessment task, I wanted to be original and decided to code a sloth. I am really happy with the end result and I loved this DTE unit, as it was something completely new and fun. I learnt the complex code behind a lot of things today and was very happy with the outcome of my Python project.

Sophie Chapman
Year 7