Last week I was selected as one of 6 from my school to attend an event called Inventionator. In this event we would attend a 3-6 hour zoom call each day for a week.

We had to identify a problem and Invent a solution. Our group thought hard about an idea and eventually we narrowed it down to something involving masks because they are compulsory in our daily life these days. After a while we landed on masks muffling your voice, because we had noticed this alot in school. Our idea was to have a mask amplify your voice using a mic on the inside and speaker on the outside. We were stoked at our idea and we jumped onto the gather auditorium for the semi finals. When the time came to announce the qualifiers for our heat we came 1st! We took on all the judges' feedback and made our final tweaks to our pitch. We were disappointed when we didn't win, but we all took a lot out of the experience. Here was our final pitch: Mask-o-phone Having trouble getting your message across? Stupid masks muffling your voice? Hi, I'm Cooper and this is Bronson, Xavier, Jacob, Eli and Elsha and together we have designed a mask that will amplify your voice to make your speech clearer. This will be a big game changer for people who are elderly or hearing impaired and already struggle to communicate. This will also be a great tool for Teachers, Public speakers, politicians etc. It contains a built-in microphone and small speaker on the outside. There will also be a volume button to adjust the sound of your mask’s speaker. The mask is made out of reusable fabric for comfort. To wash this mask you would have to remove the electronics (speaker, volume buttons and microphone) and simply just put it in the washing machine. It will also have adjustable ear straps for all different sizes of faces. Our mask is also sustainable, because the fabric it is made out of can go through the washing machine, and each mask can fit the same electronics into it, so you can change it throughout the day. We will also make a variant of the mask that's customizable for kids so that they can draw on it to make it unique to them. When the mask goes in the washing machine it will wash away the drawings so then you can redraw something different. They also come in lots of fun customizable colours. The mic will be located on the inside of the mask with a cable running in between the two pieces of fabric connecting it to the speaker. The Mask comes with a rechargeable battery and has a USB C port on the inside for charging. Personally I hate to wear a mask that nobody can hear me through all day. Thank you for listening to our pitch! Tell us, would you purchase this product?      Cooper Robertson

And now from Eli and Xavier:

For the past month we have been doing a course powered by CORE education called the iNVENTIONATOR. It is a sort of competition where you get to think and create different ideas and the best idea wins. There were at least 20 teams in the competition and six went into the finals. Eli, Xavier, Bronson, Cooper, Jacob and Elsha made up our team and our idea was called Mask-o-phone. We also had to create a pitch to show to the judges on the day.

The Mask-o-phone is a mask with a built-in microphone, speaker and volume buttons to adjust the sound so your voice is not muffled when you talk. It also comes in all different colours and sizes and it’s customizable, meaning you can draw on the mask. It’s reusable and washable and when you need to wash it you just take the electronics out and put it in the washing machine.

After a lot of hard work our group pitched our idea and we made it to the finals. We were so excited and happy that we had made it into the final. We made it into the finals because we got advice from the people running it, actioned the advice and we felt inspired! We created a really good pitch to the judges and the judges really liked it.

We tried our best, but sadly we did not get any places. We were disappointed but we know we tried our hardest.   Eli and Xavier