Adelaide High School has been involved in Tournament of Minds since it first started in South Australia. It is a program that enables students to display their many talents.
The aim of Tournament of Minds (T.O.M.) is to enhance the potential of our youth by developing diverse skills, enterprise, time management and the discipline to work collaboratively within a challenging and competitive environment. It looks behind academic achievement and understands that the pursuit of excellence knows no boundaries. .
Tournament of Minds is a team of 7 students working together in a team to solve a challenge. The Long Term Challenge is in one of the following disciplines – Applied Technology, Language Literature, Social Science and Maths Engineering. This challenge involves six weeks preparation time, ten minute presentation time in front of an audience and a panel of judges. The students must solve the problem, write a script, and make their props and their own costumes on a limited budget.
The Spontaneous problem is an unseen challenge, solved in a very short time and presented to a panel of judges.
Tournament Day is held at Flinders University in September.
The winners of the State finals in each discipline represent their state at the Australasian Pacific Finals.
Tournament of Minds 2011
This was the 21st Year of Tournament of Minds in South Australia and what an exciting year it has proved to be for the Tournament Team from Adelaide High School. For the first time in many years Adelaide was the winner of the Secondary Applied Technology Section. This means that the Adelaide Team was able to represent South Australia in the Australasian Pacific Finals in Hobart.
Tournament of Minds enables students to display their many talents and it caters for the thinkers and the doers, the leaders and followers, the dramatic and the timid and students are given opportunities to develop many skills. Tournament encourages the development of higher order thinking skills and creativity in students. It provides the challenge of open-ended problems, encourages experimentation, rewards divergent thinking and team cooperation as well as stimulating curiosity, a sense of humour and a love of learning.
The team representing Adelaide High School for this year was Sean Holbrook, Eleanor O’Sullivan, Lolita Duong, Patrick Chatz, Zola Allen, Joshua Stewart and Christopher McWhirter-Whitlock. There are four disciplines and the team decides which challenge they wish to solve - Language Literature, Maths Engineering, Social Sciences and Applied Technology. The team chose to do the Applied Technology Challenge.
The team had to create a stop motion movie of up to four minutes to document a journey. The problem was that there was limited storage space on the memory card before the end of the journey so the final destination needed to be depicted as part of the team’s live presentation to the judges. It was brilliantly done and the judges gave the team some excellent feedback.
In the six weeks leading up to Tournament Day at Flinders University the team members used much of their own to time to make the film, organise props, backdrops and costumes, write the script, edit and practise their presentation.
The students are also given a spontaneous challenge to solve and present in 10 minutes to a panel of three judges.
The Australasian Pacific Finals
Eight teams from South Australia, together with Facilitators, Committee Members and the SA Director, spent 4 days in Hobart during the October holidays. On Friday morning we walked to the Hobart City Hall where there was a Civic Reception and official welcome to Hobart. There were teams from all Australian States, including ACT and the Northern Territory, as well as teams from New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. After the official reception we were all bussed to Port Arthur for the day.
On Saturday morning the students went into lockdown for three hours so they could work on their solution to the Three Hour Challenge Presentations. The Adelaide High School Team performed really well and, although they did not win, they were fantastic and a credit to the school and the State. Their behaviour and enthusiasm over the whole four days was exemplary and I enjoyed every moment I had with them.
We are all very proud of the seven students for their ingenuity, creativity and cooperative teamwork.
Links
Tournament of Minds