Launch of the TechHub CREST Challenge

Year 10 students at St Mary's College were captivated by visiting speakers at a special assembly to launch the TechHub CREST Challenge to develop a phone app. St Mary’s students have started their journey into the arena of software development, highly motivated by words of encouragement from Tasha Sharp who is based at the Institute of IT Professionals, and four senior Victoria University students.

Elf Eldridge, a senior tutor from the School of Engineering and Computer Science, brought along four students who are studying either software engineering or networking. They provided an insight into the potential of pursuing a career in IT and also the opportunities for work at Google. Konnie and Kate who are Google ambassadors, and Bonnie and Ellie shared their passion for software development and programming.

Year 10 students reflected on the presentation:

Konnie and Kate made Google sound like a great work place, and a fun environment to be in. Bonnie and Ellie explained to us the sort of studies they do in university, and it sounded very interesting – Amelia.

Konnie and Kate taught me a lot about the Google lifestyle and environment, I absolutely agree that more women should be involved with technology as the world is beginning to have more and more technology – Kennedy.

Bonnie and Ellie talked about how they created programs and robots and cool things like that. They told us that even if you don't have a lot of knowledge about programming it’s alright because you will learn more and gain more knowledge. I think that doing this project will be fun and a lot of hard work and I'm also excited to see how it all works out at the end – Amour.

I'm looking forward to starting this project because it’s a new experience and seems like a fun challenge for me. I don't know what to expect because this is new to me but I’m keen for it and can’t wait to get stuck in – Lizzie.

There are a lot of apps on my phone so it would be really amazing to see how they are made. It is also very exciting because we will be working in groups so we will have to work together on this and use our skills to build an app – Sophie.

Thank you to Mrs Genevieve Herder, Digital Technologies, St Mary's College, for this article.