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Issue 51 – October 2014 – QUEEN MARGARET CALLING
Success at Tournaments of Minds
The Learning Enrichment and Acceleration Programme (LEAP) is an active aspect of Queen
Margaret College life. Its purpose is to give students experiences and opportunities outside of
the curriculum. Tournaments of Minds (TOM) is one of these opportunities which takes girls
out of the classroom allowing them to compete with students from around New Zealand and
internationally.
A
t this year’s competition Queen
Margaret College entered three
teams including a Junior team
comprised of Katherine Bilbrough, Gabriella
Guermanoff Lowe, Florence Bygraves,
Seraphine
Benn,
Beatrice
Fordham
Duncan, Pascale Bowie and Daisy Carter.
They received Honours in the Language
Literature section. Another Junior team
with Kate McDonald, Charlotte Gee, Harriet
Smith, Rebecca Hockley, Hannah Stevens
and Anna Schofield-Matthews, came first in
the Social Sciences section.
The Year 9 and 10 team, with Charlotte
Barber, Clara Evans, Caroline Kay, Lucy
Nalder, Charlotte Rowe, Bridie Sheedy and
Meg Wilson, also placed first in the Applied
Technology section and will travel to the
Australasian Pacific Finals in Melbourne, as
part of a New Zealand team.
At the Wellington-based competition
the Year 9/10 team were challenged to
create a wearable device to assist people in
gathering and storing data.
Charlotte Barber explains their product,
“Our invention was named the Pedometer
PRO - Promoting Reduced
Obesity. We first researched
and learnt about why obesity is
a pressing problem in society,
and how an application could
help address this issue.
The
team
interpreted
‘wearable
technology’
as
two things, a phone holder
and an application to put in
it. From there we crafted a
strap to be attached to the
leg, holding everything from
water bottles, pens and a
phone. We developed an
in-depth explanation of the
app and its uses, which was
then transcribed into an eye-
catching infomercial. We
also coded the smartphone
application as we know the
best way to reach the biggest market is
through app markets such as the App Store
and Google Play.”
Charlotte equated some of their success
to Year 9 Technology where as part of the
course they learn computer coding, which
meant they were actually able to code the
app.
The whole team is thrilled to be travelling
to Australia in Term 4 to compete for New
Zealand.
