Young women at St Clare’s College have mastered soldering, engineering skills and programming to improve the safety of traffic controllers, winning first place at the Australian Information Industry Association iAwards.
Women in STEM is alive and well in Canberra. The students’ project, which took out the Student and Education Solution category, was created as a prototype to illuminate handheld signs used by traffic controllers in a bid to lower accidents and prevent fatalities on roads.
Every week, the students (in the school’s the SWITCH Robotics Club) met to use data to drive their project. The students researched the prevalence of road crashes, fatalities and injuries caused at night and in poorly lit areas. Using this data, they decided on a problem that they could solve with technology.
The team took their idea through several iterations, seeking feedback by entering…