Students of the Mission Height School and the Mission Heights Junior College earned worldwide interest for their distinguished, award-winning performance at the Future Problem Solving Programme held at the University of Wisconsin, US last fortnight.
Anusha Aluwalia was the sole student of Indian origin in the Creative Cyber Citizens Group (CCCG), which was declared the winner in the Junior Science and Technology category.
Editor’s Note: The teenager appropriately appears as our Talent of the Fortnight in this section. An extract of her project work, aimed at making the Internet safer for children and teenagers, will appear in our next issue.
A Senthil Narayan, Sanara Swarnadhipathi and Emily Choi of the Mission Heights Primary School were other members of the CCCG.
TANE (Trees are Nature’s Educators) Team of the Junior College ranked fourth in their Division. The Project, reflecting their title, was inspired by the native bush surrounding their school. The team comprised Alex Sutton, Cara Dreyer, Christopher Townsend, Daisy Zhu, Georgia Perry and Helen Cao.
More than 2000 contestants from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and the US participated in the four-day programme held from June 10 to 13.
While even acceptance of entry is an honour at such international competitions, winning is a matter of great pride as well, especially for a school established just over a year ago.
‘Community Problem Solving’ is a part of the International Future Problem Solving Programme, engaging students in projects to seek solutions to issues within their local and wider school community.
The two teams pursued their learning goals with a sense of responsibility and involvement over the past 16 months.
The CCCG worked on a project, aimed to promote positive digital citizenship. The team worked with Gen-i, Net Safe and Hector’s World.
The Group organised a ‘Digital Citizenship Week’ and ‘E-learning Evenings’ for the school community and presented their programme to teachers and principals at the ‘National 2010 Learning @Schools Conference in February in Rotorua.’
The Group’s Project involved teaching younger students simple strategies and skills to keep cyber safe using Hector’s World resources. The Group developed an education framework for schools and strategies to prevent cyber bullying.
Veena Vohra is Principal of the Mission Heights Primary School based in Botany, Manukau City.
Read Talent of the Fortnight in this section.
Photo:
Members of the Winning CCC Group in Wisconsin, US.
