It Takes a Spark!

It takes a Spark! STEAM Symposium

This year’s STEAM showcase for boys was hosted by St Mary’s College. There were four hundred and twenty students at this year’s event. Personally, I really enjoyed this it as it provided a fun new learning opportunities for me to grow as a STEAM Engineer.

The first session of the day was one of the best because we got to host our MicroBit lesson that we have been preparing for at school during Science and our lunchtime STEM Club. There was a variety of schools at our MicroBit Mayhem session. I was in charge of two frustration tables. It was really fun teaching the students from other schools to code and play there finished games and we got some great feedback! The second session was good as well because Ethan, Jaymon, Kye and I all had “Battle Bots”, although it was not really about Battle Bots. This session was more about 3D printing and using TinkerCad to design. The last session was awesome as Carter, Aiden, Ethan, Jaymon and I all had “Automata.”,

One of my favourite parts of the day was listening to the two keynote speakers which really inspired me because they both told me about what they did as a child and how they became the people they are today. The first keynote speaker, Dr Derek Long was an agricultural engineer for USQ and he was really interesting. He told me what he does, how he does it and why he does it. The second keynote speaker, Professor Jonti Horner, an astrophysics for USQ, was my favourite out of the two as he talked about space and how many far planets he had helped discover. The best part about his speech was when he talked about how they discovered planets.

Finally, I would like to thank Ms Sleba for giving me an opportunity to go to this amazing event, it really made me think about what is waiting for me in the future. I can be anything I want to, it only takes a spark!

Reflection written by James Allan.

It Takes a Spark! EDU Conference

On Friday, 4th of June, ten girls from SSPS went to St saviours College for a STEM Symposium. We collaborated our skills about Microbits together to display our knowledge in three games; Shake the bottle, Zen and Frustration!

We also displayed our completed SWAY presentations from Science and English that showed how created the Frustration Games with Circuits, Batteries and Bulbs. We explained how to code and create these games as well as how to play them to 320 girls from other schools who were present at the Symposium. We also listened to a keynote speaker, her name was Megan Gilmour, she told us about her journey with STEM and how she never gave up on her journey to help sick kids learn and be part of their classrooms from their hospital beds.

An inspiring quote that she shared with us was “…courage before confidence.” Megan’s son having cancer when he was a primary school student sparked her in her STEM journey because he could not go to school, and she wanted to find a way using STEM to make it so that her son could go to participate in lessons and see his mates each day. After listening to Megan, we split up and four girls went to BattleBots with Mrs King and six girls went to Rocket science with Ms Harlen. Rocket Science was an interesting session, and the day overall was so much fun!

I want to thank all the students who came to display their knowledge in MicroBits, coding and STEM from SSPS, we all worked well together. The students who attended were Olivia, Sophie, Maya, Lydia, Harper, Miki, Catherine, Grace, Abby, and me (Emma).

Reflection written by Emma Barram.