03/09/2026
Yesterday we held our annual Technology Challenge for Year 5-8 students from Southland schools. This year, it was sponsored by the Waianiwa Garage and renamed the Marie Murphy Technology Challenge, in memory of a very special lady from our community who always was so involved in this event every year. Marie sadly passed away in 2023 and it is a privilege and an honour to be able to carry this event on in her memory. 🌼 A massive thank you to the Waianiwa Garage for your sponsorship enabling us to be able to run this at a very small cost to the schools to enter teams.
With close to 20 teams in each of the 2 sections, Year 5-6 and Year 7-8 it was a very tough competition. The Technology Challenge is designed to be a hands-on, engaging day where students work in teams of 4 to tackle practical, real-world technology challenges relevant to our New Zealand context. It's a fantastic opportunity for students to design and create, collaborate, apply their understanding of technological practice and showcase their creativity and problem solving abilities.
Well done to our Year 5&6 team of Ivan, Heath, Zam and Raven who did very well with their challenges.
A special congratulations to our Year 7&8 team of Precious, Mitchel, Patrick and Nina who, for the first time ever for our school, brought home the 1st place trophy! 🎉
A big thank you to our judges - Murray, Grant, Graeme and Lauren. We really appreciate your time and enthusiasm for this event and to Shari and Mrs Hyland for all your hard work organising. It ran really well and was a great day out for all the students. An appreciative thank you also to Fern Energy for providing us with spot prizes that were awarded to teams who the judges noticed working collaboratively.
