Emma Taylor, Hattie Compton-Moen and Mia Wright delivered a passionate presentation to a room full of top executives and innovative thinkers at the BizDojo for the announcement of the Hi Tech Awards finalists.

Each of the main centres invited young speakers to give their perspective of how they see technology in our future. The girls addressed issues around access to technology. They touched on how technology can provide our future with many opportunities and positive outcomes in solving issues. But with all the good that technology can offer, there is also challenge on how it can be used for destruction. . At times our ethical decision-making can also be questionable. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) thinking is what we now believe our future should be modelled on. The Arts and Philosophy are also pushing hard to be part of this future direction. Young minds will be required to think exponentially more diverse and at a pace that is astronomically chaotic. The measure of future success will be to have the skills to filter large amounts of data, synthesise what you need, and apply it when you need it.

Entries into this year's Hi Tech Awards have grown in terms of diversity. More women have entered and entries outside of the Auckland area have also increased. However the sponsors who support this event recognise that women are still under represented. The future remains bright for the minds and skills that Hattie, Emma and Mia are developing. We can't wait to see where their pathway leads them.

Gigabyte Gardens

A community garden crossed with an after school club. It’s where a group of SMC students, students from other Christchurch schools, parents and teachers have been collaborating to build a robot that can plant seeds, water and weed a garden all controlled by an app on an iPad. The robot is called a Farmbot and the group has been meeting on Sundays throughout the year to build it. They are now at the point where they can start programming the robot to garden by itself. You can watch the progress on the website www.techtotable.co.nz and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/techtotable

There is also a planter box beside the robot that the Junior School girls will tend to over the winter to see if robots or humans will win.

If you would like your daughter (or child at another school over age 5) to be come along to the club, please email flaviadean@gmail.com for details and availability of spaces.

Donations and volunteers are always welcome. In particular tiny gloves for our Junior School gardeners, garden tools (secateurs, trowels, spades). And to kick start the growing any donations of plants would be much appreciated.