BIG WIN FOR YOUNG STUDENTS
A stellar team of Year 5-6 students have taken out a national award for designing, manufacturing and marketing their innovative pet location device
EVER felt the panic of a pet going missing? Wish you could just know exactly where they were?
This is the problem five Saint Stephen’s College students set out to solve – now they’ve been awarded a national prize for doing it.
Saint Stephen’s business team i-Find Business has won the national Kidpreneur
Challenge Unleashed for designing, manufacturing and even marketing a lightweight and durable pet location device.
The team was made up of Years 5-6 students Kelsie Ball, Jay Magnuson, Oscar Williams, Amy Jo and Ethan Jones.
i-Find, created to “overcome” fears of losing a pet, is a GPS tracking pouch connected to a smartphone app, which can then show you a radar, map and how far away your pet is in metres.
The team was praised by
organisers of the competition for “building an awesome business” and “producing an excellent pitch video”.
For their teacher Jacinda Kontoleon, seeing the students and the school’s other four teams compete was special.
“It was a full-scale production ... I was always really surprised and delighted,” she said.
“There was this excitement over what they were doing and they had something at the end of it. I think they were encumbered by it at first, but they kept working together as a team to problem solve.”
The Kidpreneur Challenge, which runs over a period of 10 weeks, finished with a market day last month.
The i-Find proved to be one of the more popular products, selling out over the day and earning offers from some international companies.
“They’re the youngest team at the school to pursue this,” Ms Kontoleon said.
“These kids will probably be the leaders of our senior school in future ... they worked together, not just to make a product for any reason. They’ve made something important.”
Student Oscar Williams took on the role of company president for the business, and said the most important part for him and most of his teammates was working together on the project.
“It was a pouch we created and designed ourselves ... we had to research what technology is used in the trackers,” he said.
“All our mums volunteered to sew about five pouches.”
The Kidpreneur Challenge received contributions from more than 5000 students.