ACT Health's 'Entrepreneur: It's Your Move' Program Winners

Our students are 'design thinkers' and 'innovators' of ideas that will soon become reality and make Merici an even healthier community in which to learn and work.

The Year 7 students at Merici College, have been developing their skills in the use of digital technologies and entrepreneurial skills. Over the course of the year, there has been multiple opportunities and activities which put these skills into place. This semester, they have been working in collaboration with the ACT Department of Health for their ‘It’s Your Move’ project. ‘It’s Your Move’ is an initiative supporting a healthy, active and a productive community.

As part of the ‘Entrepreneur: It’s Your Move’ project, Year 7 had to design a concept or program to benefit students at Merici which would lead to a healthier lifestyle. As part of this, students had to undergo the design thinking process. Students and teachers learnt a problem-solving approach called design thinking. These skills are valued in a range of industries and occupations, particularly within the STEM and entrepreneurial realms. In small groups, students came up with an idea and checked it with each stage of the design thinking process:  imagine, empathise, ideate, prototype and launch. Each stage helped to improve their idea. After each stage was completed, students presented their idea to the class and competed with other groups. The winning teams were then judged by four representatives from the ACT Department of Health.

The 2 winning teams from Merici College are “Sun, Pump and Run” and  “Eating Beyond”. The focus of “Sun, Pump and Run” is to help prevent Melanoma at Merici College by offering dispensers with sunscreen in selected locations around the school grounds. The girls have been allocated the mentor David Wild, from the ACT Cancer Council, who has already agreed to offer a 20% discount for sunscreen purchases and to also donate the brackets for the sunscreen to go in.

Emmerson Reedy, Sienna Rolfe and Elissa Gallop, Year 7 students

 

It is wonderful to acknowledge the success of our Year 7 students in the 'Entrepeneur: It's Your Move' program. Our students are 'design thinkers' and 'innovators' of ideas that will soon become reality and make Merici an even healthier community in which to learn and work.

We are fortunate to have had the opportunity to pioneer the adapted sequence for junior school, a program that is being launched in other school across the ACT in 2018. In addition to this, Year 9 course options now include Entrepeneur: It's Your Move. It's Your Move is all about real life learning with a tangible 'real' outcome.

Judging from the great ideas we have heard about .. Merici will be an even healthier school in 2018.

Mrs Loretta Wholley

Principal

 

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