Tournament of Minds promotes itself as ‘an international educational program challenging the world to develop problem solving skills’ and it has certainly challenged the participating students of MLMC to be creative, flexible and resilient this year.
Four teams of students started working together face to face after school at the beginning of Term 2. At that stage, the plan was for the competition to return to live presentations at Deakin University and the teams and facilitators were enjoying the feeling of working together as well as the spontaneity that comes from bouncing ideas off others.
After connecting digitally during the first lockdown, the organisers announced that the presentations would be filmed at schools and submitted for judging, so again teams adapted, planned and extended their flexible thinking.
With plans in place for an afternoon of filming at the College, the Arts team brainstormed ways to inspire students to value Arts education in the challenge ‘Tools for the Future’, while our Social Sciences teams tried to imagine the views of famous people of history about the United Nations sustainability goals in the challenge ‘Times are a changin‘ and the STEM designers worked on devices to communicate with the International Space Station and the universe in ‘Hello?’.
But it was back to Google Meets and Zoom to film the final presentations and our students were challenged to make props and backgrounds in their own homes with few resources. All students involved are to be congratulated on their persistence and their support of their teammates.
When judging was completed, the College’s Social Sciences team of Carissa Manger, Madii Weir, Stephen Cameron, Sophia Neilsen, Abigail Mendez and Amelia MacDonald received Honours, as did the MLMC Arts team, who were also invited to compete at the State Final where they were required to show their teamwork online by solving a spontaneous challenge in front of a judging panel. Their outstanding commitment is a credit to the College.
ToM offers teams of primary and secondary school students the opportunity to solve authentic, open-ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking while developing collaborative enterprise, excellence and teamwork.
A big thank you goes to teachers Ms Natalie Hamment, Ms Christeen Fernando, Mr Tim Mannix, Mr Thomas Warren, Ms Emma Thornhill and Mr Stuart Thornhill for working with the teams as facilitators this year.
2021 MLMC Tournament of Minds teams:
1 Arts: Olive Kercher (8 Purple), Paige Prescott (8 Orange), Anika Lill (8 Green), Schemaiah Perera (10 Silver), Lissette Lopez Garza (8 Purple) and Summer Hathaway (8 Purple)
2 Social Sciences: Thomas Hobley (10 Gold), Aksa Manoj (9 Silver), Amy Langcake (9 Orange), Blake Schelfhout (7 Purple), Denisse Lopez Garza (9 Orange), Lucy Hobley (9 Jade), Mitchell Mazzarella (10 Jade)
3 Social Sciences: Carissa Manger (10 Blue), Madii Weir (7 Silver), Stephen Cameron (10 Bronze), Sophia Neilsen (8 White), Abigail Mendez (7 Red) and Amelia MacDonald (8 White)
4 STEM: Alannah Rudan (9 Silver), Lilka Faulkner (7 Bronze), Mia Story (9 Gold), Monique Ross (8 Green), Rachael Roper (8 Purple), Zacc Prentice (9 Jade)
Senior team members: Chloe Ross (11 Orange), Marisa Lopez Garza (11 Purple), Teagan McConachy (11 Blue)
