College thinkers pitch innovative products

MOUNT Rowan Secondary College is nurturing the next generation of inventive minds in science, technology, engineering, and maths through a locally run initiative.

Students from the school’s year 8 innovate class took part in a two-day social innovators program at the Ballarat Tech School last week.

The sessions were Run by the Crazy Ideas College, and Zoe Burrows said the young people were tasked with designing programs, products or services relating across arrange of topics.

They included health and wellbeing, care for the environment, community connectedness, or reimagining learning.

“The aim of their final product should be to enrich the lives of Ballarat residents,” Ms Burrows said.

“We have teams, they’ve opted to work on whatever they want, and are working through a four-phase innovation journey.

“They’ve been exploring and discovering issues in their area of interest, brainstorming big, unconventional and ridiculous ideas, scaling that down to an achievable smart-start experiment, thinking about who they can partner with in Ballarat, and then pitching their idea to community partners.”

Throughout their design process, groups explored themes including financial literacy, the ideal sustainable world, robotic emotional support technology, a healthy food festival, and a body positivity and education app.

Summer, Taliah, and Charlotte developed the latter concept, BodyEdu, an app designed to help young people experiencing puberty by offering trustworthy information about the human body as it changes.

“There’s a lot of younger people who many not have been given enough education on their body from their parents,” Taliah said.

“BodyEdu would provide accurate information that they can understand, not in scientific language.”

The students pitched their final ideas and presented their prototypes to representatives of organisations including the Shaka Project, Ballarat Community Health, Headspace, AFL Goldfields, and Integra.

Mount Rowan maths teacher Kim Silva is part of the school’s team of STEM staff who will support the year 8s to bring their idea to life throughout the year.

“We would like to expose our students to different programs that would enable them to build and develop their skills aligned with STEM,” she said.

“When it comes to them making a decision about their pathway when they reach senior school, they’ll be equipped with the necessary tools so that they can make a proper decision.

“As a staff member, I am super proud of what I’ve witnessed. I’m with the students four days a week in maths, but here I’ve been able to see them explore areas other than calculating numbers, and apply their creative ideas to something that is concrete and tangible.”