Congratulations to seventh graders Liv Dawson and Lucy Yin for being named runners-up in this year’s Micro:bit Do Your Bit Challenge. Liv and Lucy chose to tackle UN Global Goal 14: Life on Water, and specifically to target the sustainable fishing objective within that goal. Their project–the ‘Overfishing Weight Detector 3000’–is a device that can weigh the amount of fish on a boat to prevent overfishing.
This marks BDS’s third year entering the competition and our third consecutive first- or second-place finish in the North American region. For the first time this year, the project was moved from a grades 7 & 8 arts elective to part of the grade 6 technology curriculum. Because this shift meant the students had half as much class time to design their projects, I was curious to see what kind of ideas they would be able to produce. Like Lynn Lewis ’20, (2020 overall winner), Kenna Schneider ’21 and Margot Klug ’21, (2021 overall winners), and Alexander Colangelo ’21 and Noah Kokinos ’21 (2021 runners-up), Liv and Lucy found a goal they were passionate about and overcame space and time restraints to complete a project that left judges “impressed by the ambition of the idea and the solution.” To me, what these younger students achieved in a limited time might make this BDS’s most impressive win yet. Now that my lab is back open, I’m excited to see the IMPACT our students will continue to have on the global community.”
