The PE Hall in Colaiste Iosagain was packed to capacity on Wednesday as the Portarlington school held it’s third ever Sci-Fest competition.
The Transition Years were the ones exhibiting as they have been busily preparing their projects over the last number of months.
The fruits of their labour were on display as more than 30 projects were demonstrated for their parents and guests.
Great effort was made over the last number of weeks in preparing projects demonstrating creativity, innovation as well as substantial knowledge and application of the scientific method.
The school were delighted to be joined on the day by Alan Dunne SciFest School Liaison Officer, Dean Hodge STEM Educational Officer with Offaly County Council, Anna Ridgeway Past pupil and Trinity PhD student of Ocular Genetics as well as Sinead Tuohy, Education Officer with the NCCA.
The visitors, together with Eimear Foran, teacher Colaiste Iosagain, served as the judging panel for the day.
The standard of work presented was very high making it a difficult task for the judges.
Prior to the award ceremony, Anna kindly spoke to the students together with those parents in attendance about her STEM career to date and of the exciting advances in gene therapy being made in relation to eye health.
This inspiring input helped motivate the students toward achieving their potential in the STEM field.
1st Place Overall went to a project called “How does music effect weightlifting performance?” by Adam O’Dea, Dominykas Mockus and James Kinsella.
“Does music impact memory?” by Shanzay Soomro and Katie Slevin took 2nd place.
Spirit of Colaiste Iosagain award went to Rory O’Donnell and Vinny O’Brien for a project called “The effect of MDMA”.
“Does word association help memory” by Nina Hayes, Hannah Connell and Keelin Weston claimed the SciFest award.
While the Best Display award went to a project entitled “Smart phone usage Senior Vs. Junior students” by Tadhg Flynn, Paula Kurmauskaite and Katelyn Higgins.
Check out some great images from Luke Dunne below:
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