Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
A battle of the minds
THE annual global Tournament of Minds (TOM) contest will be held in South Africa for the second consecutive year in October.
The competition pits teams of seven against each other to come up with solutions to a series of mental challenges. TOM was first launched in Australia in 1987, and has spread across the world to countries including New Zealand, Hong Kong, Thailand, Uganda, and the UAE.
The contest will be hosted by private education group, ADvTECH, and will be based around its four Long Term Challenge categories; STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), social sciences, language literature and arts.
Each team chooses a
Long Term Challenge and work together to solve it over six weeks, and then present it to the judges on tournament day.
They will also be presented with a Spontaneous Challenge.
Traci Salter, ADvTECH academic strategic development adviser and TOM SA regional director, said: “On tournament day, teams are also presented with a Spontaneous Challenge. Spontaneous challenges are previously unseen ‘on-thespot’ challenges. The judges only provide a limited time for teams to discuss and plan their response.
“The purpose of the Spontaneous Challenge is to closely analyse the team’s ability to work under restricted timeframes and collectively provide a creative and effective solution backed by great reasoning and application of knowledge, skills and ideas.”
The tournament day is expected to take place on October 27, at Sundowns College in Centurion, Gauteng. Unlike last year’s event, which was only open to ADvTECH schools, this year’s TOM is open to any and all SA schools wishing to compete.
If you want your school to enter, send an email to Traci Salter at tsalter@advtech.co.za.
Entries will be accepted up until July 15. The competition is open to grades 5 to 7 on primary school level, and grades 8 to 10 for high school pupils.
The teams have to be a mix of two grades, with a maximum of four per grade in each team.
“This is a unique opportunity for schools to expose students to a global competition, and to develop in learners the kind of competencies they will require to address the unique collaborative type challenges they will face when working with different people from different backgrounds and cultures,” said Salter.