Magazine 2017

Our Grade 10s have been learning about the basics of developing their own website. Every app needs a website. Many learners complete international qualifications alongside the FET IT curriculum which include the CompTIA IT Fundamentals, ICDL web editing courses, Adobe Certified Associate in Visual Communications (Photoshop) and participation in the Netlearn Adobe Competition. Our grade 11s and 12s have been focussing on the networking and database aspects of coding - we need to be able to connect and make sense of data in order to make it useful for the world. They use these skills to develop innovative applications. Coding brings all these skills together and our learners get to shine in the areas of Mobile Application Development, Technovation and Robotics. Our Mobile Application Development utility assisted 8 teams to participate in the 2017 Technovation Challenge, a global technology entrepreneurship programme which encourages girls to brainstorm and research ideas, develop a business plan; pitch their solution and create a mobile application that addresses a local issue in their community. Two teams submitted their prototypes for their mobile applications, coded in Xcode and Swift, to the Technovation Challenge. Team Appsolutely SMT² created ThinkHire, a mobile application, that aims to link the youth and businesses. ThinkHire is aimed at helping to decrease unemployment and create a better future for job seekers. Team StarTech created an entertaining, yet educational, app for children that teaches them about gender and race stereotype. Robotics also brings all these elements together and the learners who participate in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) and the First Lego League (FLL) have their skills tested to the max! The theme for WRO this year was “RAP THE SCRAP” which involved teams in each of the five specific categories, either building a robot according to specifications and programming it to complete a specific task in a required amount of time or building a robot to solve an identified theme related problem. Two of our Robotics teams earned Gold medallist status at the South African World Robotics Olympiad and were invited to represent South Africa at the New Delhi Event in November 2016. Team Robodog came home with a 12th place in the Regular Elementary Category - a first for South Africa. Team Infinity were placed 15th overall for their autonomous boat, which collected trash on the surface of the water. Critical Thinking, teamwork and presentation skills need to come together in a winning combination for participants of the First Lego League in the 2016 “Animal Allies” theme. Our teams Hyperion Bots and Eureka participated in the regional and then national competitions together with 27 other regional teams. Team Eureka’s bat box project research, which intends controlling the spread of highly dangerous diseases through the largescale monitoring of bat migrations, won the overall Project Research Award and a 12th place overall. Team Hyperion Bots 'horse bit design, which through its effective materials massively reduces the damage to horses’ nerve, bone and cranial structure, earned them the South African Champion title in the FLL National 2016 competition. Team Hyperion Bots went on to represent South Africa in Houston (Texas) at the First Lego League World Festival in April 2017. Our Mobile App Development incubator has a vision to create young entrepreneurs of the future by teaching learners how to solve real world problems and challenges through the development of professional, relevant, commercial and educational applications for the global market. Stephan Cilliers has been key in moving the incubator forward this year by training fellow learners and some educators in the basics of Apple’s Swift coding. Stephan Cilliers and Luke Bowles’ iOS application had 25000 downloads in May 2017. It has been amazing to have our own learners developing and sharing apps that are making an impact on the world stage. Stephan designed a series of lessons to teach Arrays (an intermediate programming concept) in Swift Playgrounds for iPad and was selected to attend the WWDC for the second time in June 2017. In July 2017 Apple facilitated a course for our learners and educators in Swift Coding by flying one of their lead Swift trainers out from Brazil to spend a week of the holidays helping us get ready to take our coding of apps to the next level. #everyonecancode 138 Parklands College, Twentieth Edition, 2017