During Week 3, Thursday and Friday, Ned and I went to the ‘Cultural Innovators, Loud and Proud STEM Aboriginal Learner Congress’. We had two different days to participate in the activities that we were placed into. We were in Group A. The first thing we did on the first day was go to the opening of the Congress to listen to the Welcome to Country, performed by Uncle Moogy. Once the Opening of the Congress was finished all the groups went to the Foyer to get our morning tea. The options we could choose from were muesli bars, pieces of fruit and juice boxes. After we got our morning tea we moved to our first activity. Our activity was Stories in the Stars. We talked about the story of the Birray Birray (three brothers) and the Miyay Miyay (seven sisters). Our second activity was called Launching a VR Spear. We learnt about a woomera (spear launcher) and what the different shapes do and how they affect the throw. Once that activity was done, we had lunch, which was premade for us. For lunch, we had a chicken, lettuce, and tomato wrap. In the box that our lunch came in there also was some banana bread and some cheese and biscuits.

On the morning of the second day we attended a welcome back to Congress. Once that was done we had to grab our morning tea and look for our a guide with our activity number because we were going off-site. For our activity, we walked down to the University of Adelaide and the activity was called Discovering your future in Space and STEM. Our challenge was to build something to help a Mars rover (Sphero robot) out of a crater using resources available in the Space Shop (a table of craft items). My team built a ramp! The tough thing about the challenge was that we had a budget, so we had to be careful about how much we were spending. I was in charge of making the logo and making sure we didn’t go over the budget. Our budget was $500,000 which seems like a lot but the building materials were expensive! Ned was in charge of building the ramp and making sure that it would work. Our team got it on the second try of trying to get it out of the crater. Thank you so much to Miss Schubert for taking us down both days and helping make this possible for Ned and I!

Aliyse Medley