Hillcrest girls tech superheroes
Meleena Radcliffe and Annabel Zhou believe anything is possible in the future.
The Year 13 programming students at Hillcrest High School say innovation in digital technologies is forever growing.
‘‘There’s a lot of focus on automation of jobs, and some people think it sounds like science fiction, but we’ve been studying how you can do it,’’ Radcliffe said.
She and Zhou, alongside CJ Schipper, recently won the Tech Girls are Superheroes Challenge.
The competition aims to encourage school girls to get involved in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects.
It is the first time it has been run in New Zealand and Hillcrest are the inaugural winners.
The girls researched and developed an app called Drink Minder to track teenage drinking.
The app centres around the health and wellbeing of teenagers who have become reliant on alcohol and want to make a positive change.
Once the user enters their personal details such as height, weight and gender, they will be prescribed a personalised plan to help them succeed.
Drink Minder also links to other services such as taxis and addiction organisations.
As national winners, Radcliffe, Zhou and Schipper received $1000 prize money, a social media campaign and the title of 2018 Tech Girls Are Superheroes Ambassadors.
It took twelve weeks to complete the project.
‘‘You want to make something that’s relevant to people around you. You want to make something that could potentially help people,’’ Zhou said.
‘‘We’re teenagers and we know teen drinking is an issue. I think they weren’t expecting us to come up with this as a topic,’’ Radcliffe said.
Digital Technologies Programming is an optional course at Hillcrest. Radcliffe and Zhou have taken the subject since Year 9.
Out of 24 students in the class, five are female.
It may be a male dominated subject, but Radcliffe and Zhou say learning it has been beneficial.
‘‘It’s kind of like you’re learning a craft,’’ Radcliffe said.
‘‘It’s a nice mix of creative and logical thinking. You get to use both sides of your brain. The future is pretty much all in that direction, so it’s opening up pathways for yourself,’’ Zhou added.