Deputy Principal - Teaching & Learning, Ms Elizabeth Watson
Our Tournament of the Minds team presented to the regional judges on Sunday, 28 August – the challenge? To build an Ornithopter (mechanical flying bird) using a limited list of allowable materials. A challenge like this is extreme and the hardest of all challenges on offer, but our students did not shy away from engaging with a challenge!
Opportunities like this offer a different way of looking at “Education”, aligning with Rhodes Scholar, Jonah Lehrer, who encourages students to reach for the unknown and make the impossible possible: “Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination.”
It is the students who are brave enough to look beyond the comfort of always knowing the answers who will learn how to question and reflect in a way that makes the impossible possible. It is a privilege to work with Jack Ballinger, Kaspar Emmanouilidis, Oliver Rahmat, Alexander Kingma, Hudson Lagan-Stark, Oisin Hughes and Liam Murray.
Now, we go into a phase of reflection with STEM specialists considering the aerodynamics of our Ornithopter and how we will modify our original design for our second version of modelling, whilst we eagerly await judges’ feedback – watch this space!
Ms Helen Barrie
Head of Academic Enrichment
hbarrie@waverley.nsw.edu.au
