I went to the SuperHero Daughter Day on Saturday at TechnologyOne in Brisbane. I was taking my daughters of course, but also scoping out the potential of this competition to support our Young Innovators. I had been interested in this last year but the time-frame for entry hadn’t seemed to suit us then. I have since visited the Technovation Group running over at St Aiden’s on one afternoon a week. St Aiden’s supplied the team PawsOut, who were were the National winners in 2015. The aim of this competition is that groups of girls, working with a mentor, create a digital solution (in the form of an app) to solve a problem in their local community. Here is their pitch video for their app:
This year, TechGirls are SuperHeroes have teamed up with the global Technovation Challenge. After our recent Oakleigh SS QLD Women’s Week event, it is interesting to reflect on the data that was provided to us during this week regarding women in fields of leadership and fields of STEM and the personal stories which were shared to us during our Leadership Panel last Thursday night …….
…..and then to reflect on how important it is to support our girls in this area. Microsoft have also shared this thought-provoking clip about this very topic:
So, the TechSuperGirls Challenge is a challenge, similar to the Young ICT Explorer Competition that enables students to work collaboratively to design a solution to a problem in their community. They are both challenges that align directly with the futures oriented perspective of the Digital Technologies Curriculum. Students are certainly using the mindset, skillset and toolset of Design Thinking and their skills of computational thinking to create an app that solves the problem.
It is time to register for this challenge! I am still working to coordinate options for next term for our Young Innovator Program. It is highly likely that involvement in this challenge will be available as part of our Young Innovator Program in Term 2 and Term 3. Wednesday is the most likely day and it will be available for Yrs 4-6 girls.
As we left, a sketchnote summarising the session had been displayed:
