STUDENTS at Xavier Catholic College, Hervey Bay, have proven they know how to solve a problem.
Two teams of Xavier students attended the 2011 Opti-MINDS Challenge at Shalom College, Bundaberg, recently and came away winners of the Wide Bay Regional Challenge.
Opti-MINDS Challenge is a problem-solving event for participants aged six years and older.
Last year more than 8000 participants across the state took part in the program whereby teams are given six weeks to solve an open-ended challenge in the areas of science engineering, language literature or social sciences.
The solution must be dram-atised and presented to a panel of judges and an audience on Opti-MINDS Day with only team members allowed to work on the challenge solution and presentation facilitated by the support of their teachers.
Xavier Catholic College director of media and publicity Roxanne Hawes said the Language literature team included four girls – Jessica D’Silva, Ellie Hopgood, Isabel Richter and Carly Burch – who wrote a script based around the book “The Witches” by Roald Dahl.
“The successful science and engineering team created a device that moved as many as three-hundred marbles in sixty seconds,” she said.
“Their team was made up of a mixture of Year 8 and Year 9 boys including Jack Pidding-ton, Ashly Damien, Agnelle D’Silva, and brothers James and William Gatenby.”
Ms Hawes said the wins were the result of six weeks of preparation and group cohesion.
“Both teams succeeded in being selected to represent the Wide Bay region for the Opti-MINDS Creative Sustainability Challenge,” she said.
“The teams impressed the judges and found the experience to be inspiring, exciting and worthwhile.”
Ms Hawes said that, as regional winners, the teams had been invited to contest the state final at the University of Queensland in Brisbane this weekend (October 15 and 16).
