High Potential & Gifted Learners Program
Thinking Like Plato: Philosophical & Ethical Thinking Elective
In Week 6, our Philosophical & Ethical Thinkers participated in the Middle School Ethics Olympiad Training Day. An Ethics Olympiad involves discussing moral and philosophical issues as a team. The Olympiad promotes critical thinking, philosophical examination, civil discourse, international engagement and an appreciation for diverse ethical perspectives on issues.
This year’s cases include the ethical issues associated with:
- Lying
- Groupwork
- The tension between the rights and responsibilities of consumer and those of the proprietor
- Keeping dividends as a result of human error
- The metaphysics of artificial intelligence and simulated realities
- Financial incentives
- The impact of a country’s decisions on an individual
- Eating meat
The students are looking forward to the day of the competition on Friday 24 November.
Thinking Like Elon Musk: Enterprise & Creative Thinking Elective
Last Week, our Entrepreneurial & Creative Thinkers submitted their entries for the STEM Make a Difference (MAD) Competition. This competition requires participants to develop an innovation that addresses real-world problems and demonstrates how students in Catholic schools take action. Student teams are designing a range of products, services and innovations to make a difference within their community, the people around them or in their environment.
Project: Calm Cap
Designers: Mannat Dhariwal and Anna Matthews
The Calm Cap is a product that detects overstimulation, stress and other irregularities using brain wave frequencies and then, with the app, produces a suggestion that aims to counter these - subtle in public situations, portable and accessible.
Learn more about Anna and Mannat's design process here:
Project: Battery to Pottery Chamber
Designers: Gabriel Wark & Finn Baker
Our product, the Battery to Pottery Chamber, is a machine that extracts and recycles expired lithium batteries to reduce landfill and contamination. The product extracts the lithium from electric car batteries and converts it into a gas that can be condensed and used in the production of pottery glazing. It uses the reaction of lithium when it is exposed to pure oxygen to convert spent lithium into white lithium oxide which is one the the critical agents in the glazing for pots.
Learn more about Gabriel and Finn's design process here:
Project: M&C GUMTM -
Designers: Harper Dent, Davis Flanagan, Ben Melinz
Monkey & Co is an eco-friendly brand of gum producers targeting the young, active and lazy. With the ability to easily digest your gum with an added health benefit, eating gum has never been more recommended. Forget the old days of eating fattening, gut rotting and outlawed gum, and welcome to the new age of gum so good that your doctor will recommend it. Our preliminary prototype, which we are soon to put into testing, includes the following ingredients: xylitol (natural sweetener), gum base (Starch, Beeswax, Calcium Carbonate, Chicle), peppermint oil (flavouring), food colouring (colour), aspartame, probiotic.
Here is an image of the product:
Another STEM-related opportunity has been offered to HP&G students on Monday Week 3 next term. The Transforming Transport Project, a collaboration between Young Change Agents (YCA) and Southern Cross University. The program will develop students' social and green entrepreneurship mindset, design thinking skills, innovation, and 21st-century skills as they reimagine transport that benefits people and the planet.
Students undertaking this optional project will develop their entrepreneurial skills by thinking outside the box to create solutions to real-life issues relating to transport. The participants will be challenged to think creatively and critically, further developing their entrepreneurial mindsets, skillsets and toolsets for success. They will expand their understanding of digital technologies and benefit from mentors and expertise from Southern Cross University with their focus on sustainability, innovation, and technology. Students will have their eyes opened to potential pathways they never knew were possible.
The top two teams from the 1-day program will have the opportunity to progress to a 2 day Youth Incubator (YINC).