{"id":23895,"date":"2019-05-31T13:06:09","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T17:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23895"},"modified":"2019-05-31T13:06:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T17:06:18","slug":"st-jerome-students-innovative-ideas-garner-awards-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/st-jerome-students-innovative-ideas-garner-awards-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Jerome students\u2019 innovative ideas garner awards recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rubik\u2019s Cube has\nconfounded many of us since it first hit the market over 40 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have been\ntackled with gusto, thrown across the room in frustration, and occasionally\nsolved \u2013 but students at Aurora\u2019s St. Jerome Catholic School put 40 years of\ninnovation into action, their target being solving the Rubik\u2019s Cube once and\nfor all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A LEGO robot,\nequipped with a colour sensor, is just one of the student innovations that\ncaught the eye of the EdCan Network. The EdCan Network, a resource promoting\ninnovative teaching, is set to visit the east Aurora school on Wednesday to\npresent students with the Ken Spencer Award for Innovation in Teaching and\nLearning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The award will be\npresented to the school for their SPLICE projects, an initiative that brings\ntogether students\u2019 building, construction, coding, engineering, digital arts,\nculinary arts, filmmaking performance and arts skills and has the kids focus on\ntheir interest for one specific project that \u201callows students the opportunity\nto push their imagination and take risks without fear of failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the process,\nteachers mentor students working on their projects instead of instructing them,\n\u201callowing students the opportunity to push their imaginations without fear of\nfailure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rubik\u2019s\nCube-solving robot is the brainchild of Grade 8 students Christian Roldan and\nJuliano Grossi, who say they were challenged to go the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA bunch of people\nsaid it was impossible, that we couldn\u2019t do it, that it was really going to be\nchallenging and that drove us really far,\u201d says Juliano. \u201cThey said it was\nimpossible, but we wanted to prove them wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through some trial\nand error, and some technical challenges when it came to the on-board infrared\ncolour sensor, that\u2019s exactly what they did, and now their robot can solve that\nmaddening novelty toy in just over a minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the artistic side\nof things, fellow Grade 8 students Ruby Brown, Estelle Kim and Paola Tenaglia\nput their filmmaking skills into action on a special graduation video that\ncaptures their graduating class\u2019s school year in a neat, emotionally-charged\npackage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full video will\nbe unveiled next month near the end of the school year, but the trio have\nshared a teaser trailer with the school community that already has their peers\nbuzzing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to do\nsomething a little bit out of our comfort zones but still interesting to us,\u201d\nexplains Ruby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Estelle: \u201cLast\nyear, I was introduced to video-making [through] a school project where we had\nto make a video-oriented PSA and I really, really enjoyed editing and taking\nvideo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe three of us have\nbeen really interested in all parts of [filmmaking] and we felt the grad video\nwould also have the emotional factor to it, and that\u2019s what drove us even\nfurther.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this is music to\nthe ears of Principal Siobhan Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Juliano joked\nthat he wanted to do SPLICE because he wouldn\u2019t have to do an end-of-year\nspeech, Ms. Wright is quick on the button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSpeeches are very\ntraditional and our junior and intermediates have an opportunity to do them,\nbut they don\u2019t recognize that when you\u2019re up there [presenting the SPLICE\nprojects], guess what you\u2019re doing?\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes this so\nsuccessful. It is something we want to see going forward because it is not the\ntypical oral communication; students actually get to go up there, speak about\nwhat they are passionate about, and basically what they are going to be doing\nlater on in their lifetimes: speaking at their job opportunities that we don\u2019t\neven know exist yet! The oral communication piece and presenting is all going\nto be a part of that \u2013 and you didn\u2019t even know you did it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ken Spencer Awards for Innovation in\nTeaching and Learning recognize innovative work taking place in classrooms\nacross Canada.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir The Rubik\u2019s Cube has confounded many of us since it first hit the market over 40 years ago. They have been tackled with gusto, thrown across the room in frustration, and occasionally solved \u2013 but students at Aurora\u2019s St. Jerome Catholic School put 40 years of innovation into action, their target being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2019-05-30-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6dp","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-24 21:57:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}