CHERRY HILL – Bringing together Catholic elementary school students for hours of imagination, innovation, creation and collaboration, Camden Catholic High School held its inaugural iDesign Challenge on Nov. 30.
Around 50 seventh- and eighth-grade students from four schools – Resurrection, Cherry Hill; Saint Peter, Merchantville; Saint John Paul II, Stratford, and Saint Mary, Williamstown – were introduced to design thinking (understand, define, image, create and innovate) and formed teams to compete against each other in exercises aimed at improving everyday life. The prize: a $1,000 scholarship to Camden Catholic.
“The beauty of [this challenge] is that it offers students a hands-on experiential opportunity to collaborate with others, empathize with those [with different opinions] and engage in problem-solving,” said Angelo Milicia, the school’s director of institutional advancement who is also an honors biology teacher.
Milicia served as one of the program’s judges along with principal Heather Crisci, and Dr. An Nguyen, Intro to Design Thinking teacher and director of the Robotics Program at Camden Catholic.
As the school’s director of academic innovation last spring, Milicia led a group of Camden Catholic students to the IgniteSTEM conference at Princeton University. After seeing the impact of the program’s hands-on, project-based learning on his pupils, both parties were eager to bring something similar to Camden Catholic.
“IgniteStem helped me be open to new possibilities and solutions,” Camden Catholic junior Francis Fernandes said of the Princeton conference. “By expressing my opinions and listening to others, I realized we could combine [our ideas] and create something even better.”
Fernandes was among the Camden Catholic students who facilitated the iDesign Challenge on Nov. 30, supervising the elementary school youth as they used whiteboards, Post-it notes and Chromebooks to devise solutions to two challenges: design the perfect backpack or improve local grocery stores.
After brainstorming, 13 teams of students decided which challenge to tackle.
From John Paul II School’s Science Matters team, seventh-grader Linda Mertz and teammate Myrlandria Hagan brainstormed ways to create fashionable, yet effective student backpacks.
“We thought about the students walking home, and wanted a backpack that could help you in all situations, be it rainy, cold or hot weather,” Mertz explained, adding that plans for an umbrella or hood were discussed.
She acknowledged the initial difficulty of melding many diverse student voices. However, she found that compromise “helped me adapt [my thinking] and connect with my classmates.”
After each team received five minutes to make their presentations, they were evaluated on four pillars: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and presentation communication.
Coming out victorious was Saint Peter School’s eighth-grade team, Punk Spunks. The team took on the backpack project and combined memory foam for laptops, seatbelt design straps and pencil storage compartments. Each student from the team received a scholarship.
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