Merrimac shines in tech field
STEAM program nurtures tomorrow’s digital minds
MERRIMAC State High School is nurturing the digital minds of tomorrow through its STEAM (Science, Technology, Enterprise, Arts and Maths) Academy in robotics and artificial intelligence – and it is reaping rewards on the national front.
The academy, led by former software engineer Daniel Ricardo, was launched five years ago after identifying limited opportunities for students to engage in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.
“We looked around at what other schools were doing and made a commitment to give our students the opportunity to explore technological concepts through practical applications and develop their digital skills to better prepare them for the world beyond school,” Mr Ricardo said.
This year, Merrimac’s senior team won the state CyberTaipan competition and placed fifth in Australia against 90 teams.
They will advance to the international stage of the competition. It will be held virtually due to the COVID-19-related travel restrictions.
In April, students missed out on representing Australia competing at the VEX World Robotics Championship in Louisville, Kentucky; and also defending their title at the World Robotics Summit in Tokyo because of the pandemic.
Student Siaan Petersen said: “When we were at primary school there wasn’t anything like this to get you started, although now Merrimac does a lot of work with local primary schools to get younger kids engaged much earlier.
“They
STEAM come here days where for they
build robots and learn how to code them and while we never had that opportunity it’s great to be able to help them.”
Mr Ricardo said that, while there was no guarantee the academy’s students would end up choosing an IT career pathway, all of them would use the technological skills
they had gained from the program as almost every field has embedded IT systems driving them.
“It’s all about developing their critical thinking and problem solving capabilities, identifying problems and coming up with creative ways of using technology to resolve them,” he said.